


Holometabolism

by orphan_account



Category: Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Gen Fic, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-16 22:31:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>adj Entomology : undergoing complete metamorphosis. Some things change in the face of destruction, rather than die off completely. In the aftermath of the incident in China, the BSAA faces some new challenges, both within and in the rest of the world. Major spoilers for Resident Evil 6.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chrysalid

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter is apologetically short, but it should set the tone for what's to come. The first chapter isn't very mature and only vaguely homoerotic, fair warning.

It went from cold to hot in the matter of seconds, but time is something you can’t really measure when you have that much adrenaline rocketing through your system and using your brain for a punching bag. Piers learned that a long time ago in basic training, and he tries desperately to keep focused and calm solely because it’ll make drowning that much less painful, or so he thinks.

The compound around him falls apart as the water rushes in from the hull damage and there’s electricity shooting through the water, but Piers doesn’t mind that like other people would. Other people don’t usually willingly infect themselves with the C-Virus either, especially not with noble intentions in mind. Piers feels the grating underneath his feet give and it causes his pulse to spike in panic instinctively and he feels a little colder, body temperature rising further.

And then it starts to hurt as he finally sinks into the water and the last pocket of air is pushed out of the mangled hull, leaving Piers completely encased in cold, crushing water. He’d cry out if he still had air, his mutated arm sparking and sizzling in the water as agonizing waves of heat clash within his body against the cold water surrounding him. A burst of light flashes across Piers’ eyes as he lets out a last chain of bubbles out of his mouth in a silent cry before his body finally succumbs to the mutation.

\---

It’s a warm and beautiful day in Mazatlan. People are relaxing on the beach outside one of the city’s best Mexican Beach Resorts, tanning and swimming and laughing. There’s music playing from the oyster bar next door and the lifeguard on duty is relaxed up on his high chair overlooking the beach and the ocean. Peace and carefree happiness are settled over the people playing in the sand and in the water until a startled cry comes from one of the women swimming and she all but leaps out of the water, rushing to get away from something floating on the surface.

A large yellow-green crusty blob floats along the water towards shore, and the more people see it, the more they scramble out of the water, fearful of whatever possible contamination lies within the mysterious cocoon. The green enigma finally beaches itself up on the sand as a little girl tugs the lifeguard over to investigate on everyone’s behalf.

Nervously, the lifeguard approaches the cocoon and raps on it gently with his knuckles. The cocoon shakes and a collective gasp echoes out of the crowd. The front of the crowd closest to the cocoon all jump in terror when a crunching noise sounds from the cocoon, only to jump even higher as a fist punches through the shell. A human fist; scarred, but human. It punches again and again until the hole is big enough for two arms to reach out of the hole and begin tugging the shell apart further. The pieces of the shell that drop onto the sand begin to erode, and slowly, a figure straightens up out of the husk as it melts apart.

A somewhat-lanky fit man stands there, clothing in tatters, hanging off his shoulders and hips loosely. He looks completely normal if it wasn’t for the light and dark lines and marks marring his right arm, and the faint scars that cut in a clean curve across his forehead and down over his right eye and cheek. The scars do not mark the area comprising his eye-socket. Instead, both eyes are in perfect condition and such an eerie shade of gray-green that they are almost silver.

The man looks around at everyone, catches the looks he’s receiving and quickly tugs his pants (or what’s left of them) up a little higher, stepping out of the sludge that used to be his cocoon in ragged boots, and starts walking towards the resort.

\---

Despite Neo-Umbrella dying with Carla Radames, the C-Virus is still being sold on the black market. The BSAA has been working tirelessly trying to find the suppliers, with various agents working undercover in every unsavory place they can think of across the globe. Chris Redfield sits at his desk at BSAA Headquaters, having pulled out from his location to see if he can’t think up any more-effective means to track down the source of the C-Virus.

But Chris is out of ideas and too exhausted to honestly come up with anything new. There’s circles under his eyes and stubble decorating his jaw line as he leans on his elbows, folded hands against his mouth as he gazes into his bookshelf across the office as though it just insulted his sister. Chris told everyone in the office that he wasn’t taking any calls until he’d made some real headway on the current predicament. Thus far, all he’s got is a growing headache, which is worsened when his phone rings. Reluctantly, Chris picks up the organization-issue cell phone and hits the answer button before putting it to his ear. “Captain Redfield.”

“Captain,” A familiar voice says shakily, sounding relieved, and Chris’ jaw sets as he feels his insides turn to ice.

“Who the hell is this?” He asks darkly, because there’s no way in hell it could be him. There’s no way in hell it could be Piers Nivans.

“It’s me. It’s Piers.” Piers answers insistently. “This isn't a joke or a prank or anything-- I just woke up on a beach-- I’m someplace they speak Spanish..”

“If you’re Piers then prove it.” Chris humors and wills himself to not hope against hope that this isn’t some ploy or sick joke.

“I gave you my patch.” Piers answers quietly, and Chris instinctively looks to the bloodstained patch on the bicep of his uniform. He looks back to the papers strewn about his desk, but the words are foreign to him despite being in English; his mind is unable to process them. Quietly, he speaks.

“I’m coming to get you, Piers.” He says resolutely, his hold on the phone tightening a little as he gets to his feet and leaves his office. He doesn’t care if Piers is all the way back in China, he’ll walk to go get him if he has to. But Piers washed up on a beach where people were speaking Spanish, and knowing the currents of the water where the Haos had been kept, Chris would bet his money if he gambled on Mexico.

“Alri--” There’s a thunk, a pained grunt, and then nothing on the other line. Chris’ heart skips a beat in panic.

“Piers?” No answer. “Piers?!” Still nothing.

And then the click of the phone hanging up on the call.


	2. Santa Muerte

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain Redfield and his team go into an unconventional warzone in search of answers, calling on close friends for help. And how far he's willing to go just might come into question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's chapter two. I read it over 50 million times trying to make sure I didn't have a bunch of errors like the last chapter. If anyone's interested in beta-ing for me, let me know, thank you. I also want to make a note that this is purely for entertainment purposes, names are a coincidence for the most part, and I do not mean to offend anyone's culture or native languages with this written work.

It’s a sweltering 110 degrees outside when they get to Tucson. Chris squints from behind his sunglasses, wearing a simple dark green polo shirt and khaki pants. If he had his way, he’d be entering Mexico in his uniform, but the BSAA’s presence in Mexico has to be minimal, for the sake of their contact that they’ll be meeting in Hermasillo. He and six of his men pile into a ridiculously beaten-up SUV after refueling and getting refreshments in Tucson with Chris behind the wheel. His phone rings and Chris answers it a little too quickly. “This is Chris.”

“Hey, partner.” And the greeting makes Chris smile a little despite the dire worry that’s been plaguing him since the line went dead in his office two days ago.

“Hey, Jill. Keeping your nose clean?” Chris leans back in the seat, making his way out of Tucson for the border.

“I’m not the one stuck in a shitty SUV with six agents who are green enough around the gills to pull off the frat boy cover story you put together.” Jill answers with a reserved smile evident in her voice. She’s trying to keep her voice down. “I wanted to give you a heads up. Things are _tense_ around here, to say the least, and what I’ve managed to find out points to something _big_ going down. And today. Move your ass.”

“Jill, giving you assistance isn’t my only priority…” Chris points out, but they both know he has no intention of leaving his long-time partner in a lurch.

“You’ll find him.” Jill reassures, someone shouting in Spanish in the background. “I have to go.”

“Right. I’ll contact you once we’re in Hermasillo.” Chris replies before hanging up. He tucks the phone away and puts both hands on the wheel, speeding up just enough to shave off an hour of travel time between Tucson and Hermasillo.

Finally making it into the city as the afternoon sun shines overhead, Chris pulls out his cell phone and puts it to his ear after dialing Jill’s number. The phone rings one ring, then cuts off in the middle of the second ring. “Yes.”

“We’re in the city. Meeting point?” Chris glances to the agent in the passenger seat beside him, who has his own phone prepared to take down the address so he can use their GPS to get there, considering that those kinds of programs and Chris typically don’t get along at all. When Jill answers the question, Chris repeats it to his subordinate, who quickly pulls it up on the map on his cell and motions for where Chris needs to turn next.

\---

Jill Valentine has been working her ass off since she got to Mexico, and it has finally paid off. Working undercover hasn’t been easy; bartending at a crummy dive under the pretense of a pretty face and little intelligence has been frustrating yet rewarding in an irritating sort of way. She brushes her dark hair out of her face-- she had to dye it in order to get it back to its natural hue and has to use an eyebrow pencil to make her eyebrows match. She finishes cleaning her handgun and reassembles it. Right now, Jill is waiting.

She’s waiting in a cheap hotel room for her former partner and his team to show up and receive her report and intel. Jill has had time on her hands to check her firearms and equipment and change into her uniform, sans emblems. When a knock comes to the door, it doesn’t even take Jill a second to load her handgun and take the safety off. She strides over to the door and peers out of the spy hole to see Chris Redfield standing on the other side with six other men. Jill opens the door a crack, inspecting all seven of them skeptically before she finally opens the door completely and lets them in, handgun hidden behind the door and aimed at the floor.

“Jill,” Chris turns and greets her with a small smile and waits until the door is shut to start asking questions. “What’ve you got for us?”

“I’ve got our mainline buyer.” She turns to him, smirking. “Who has in turn been distributing the C-Virus to lesser organizations that’re under their thumbs.”

Jill pulls a flash drive out of one of the pouches on her belt and offers it to Chris. “All the intel and data that I’ve gathered so far. It’s the Sinaloa Drug Cartel-- if we can get our hands on someone in the cartel that knows enough, we can find out who they’re buying the C-Virus from.”

Chris nods in approval, turning to look out the window as he speaks to the six men with him. “Get changed.”

Without question, all seven men in the room get to work getting ready while Jill double checks that all the curtains are drawn before stepping into the bathroom and rinsing out a plastic cup. She speaks to Chris while she politely keeps her back turned. “It’s almost time-- apparently the Sinaloa Cartel is confronting the Beltrán Levya Cartel. Sinaloa’s men outnumber the Beltrán Levya men three to one… but the Beltrán Levya Cartel has the local law enforcement in their pockets.”

“And you’ve got reason to believe that the Sinaloa Cartel is going to be using the C-Virus to settle the score.” Chris deduces as he shrugs on his MOLLE vest. Jill pours herself a cup of coffee out of the cheap 4-cup coffeemaker on the counter beside the sink and takes a slow sip.

“That’s right.” She answers, leaning against the sink as she drinks her coffee. “They’ve got the C-Virus in injection pens for immediate infection when the time is right. There are photographs of them moving the boxes of the garbage on that flash drive.”

“So… see if we can’t intercept the boxes, do a little crowd control, bag ourselves an informant.” Chris lists off, loading his assault rifle. “Anything else?”

Jill tosses her plastic cup into the trash. “No, that’s everything.”

“Then let’s get to work.” Chris replies, voice resolute.

\---

Jill leads the team to the warehouse the Sinaloa Cartel is using to house their stockpile of C-Virus weaponry, taking them through the foliage of the lot behind the warehouse. The agents move through the tall, sandy grass as silently as possible, Jill squinting out from under the bill of her baseball cap at the warehouse. “A door on each side, on the back, and the two main sliding doors on the front of the building. They usually have five men on guard at all times.”

Chris looks to his men following him and motions for three to take the left and three to take the right. He leans close to mutter to Jill. “We’ll take the back. They wouldn’t want this fight to spill out onto the road, so the front door won’t be a problem.”

“Right.” Jill agrees, rising from her crouching position enough to keep low and still move in on the warehouse. The team moves in silently, trained for this sort of operation, and when Chris and Jill are finally standing right in front of the back door, Chris signals for his men to move in.

Jill pulls a flash grenade off of her belt, pulling the pin out as Chris kicks the back door in, and his former partner throws the grenade into the warehouse. The BSAA operatives look away as the grenade goes off, then storm into the warehouse, guns raised for any adversaries foolish enough to get in their way.

They’d have been disappointed if there weren’t any answering gunshots.

It’s not difficult to get guns in Mexico, despite the country having some of the strictest gun control laws. Single-action, semi-automatic, full-automatic… all available for the ones willing to take the risks and pay the right price, and men in the warehouse have some of the best firearms available, gripping at the triggers and letting the bullets fly. Lots of firepower and absolutely no skill.

The BSAA operatives, however, are trained to value every bullet and know where to put just one in order to get the job done in the quickest amount of time. Two of Chris’ subordinates dispatch two of the thugs with four bullets total, while Jill rounds on a third and slams the butt of her Beretta into the side of his head without mercy. In the blink of an eye, she has a thick black zip-tie in her hands and is binding the man’s wrists behind his back as he slumps to the floor unconscious.

Chris takes out a fourth man as another two scramble over to a container in the warehouse, one of them shouting in Spanish into a cell phone. They yank the container open and one of them grabs a stun baton off the side of the container before scrambling inside. Chris strides over to try and stop the two from whatever plan they’re enacting, only to hear a wet, nauseating whine from within the container. As soon as the creature steps out of the container, Chris knows what it is. The Harper-Kennedy report warned the BSAA about these things.

“Get up the scaffolding! Now!” He orders, and the agents make for the stairs that lead up to the second floor, which is really just a series of walkways overlooking the warehouse. Chris turns and helps Jill lift their unconscious witness off the floor, but then the Lepotitsa freshly released from the container does what it was made to do, and the blue-ish C-Virus gas billows out from its pores. Chris and Jill manage to get the man to the stairs before the Lepotitsa suddenly appears out from the smoke and grabs at the man’s ankle, yanking violently. Chris lets go then tugs Jill back. “Leave him!”

Jill lets out a frustrated growl and turns on her boots to head further up the stairs, wanting to get some distance between them and the Lepotitsa before she opens fire on it. “It’s the thing from the Harper-Kennedy report!”

“That’s right.” Chris says from beside her, the other agents opening fire from their vantage point on the other side of the warehouse until the thugs caught in the cloud of C-Virus down below begin to drag their feet up the stairs, reanimated into zombies and one more thing on the team’s list of things to shoot to death in the warehouse.

The Lepotitsa continues to expel its noxious gas as it makes its way slowly up the stairs with the zombies it has created. The gas doesn’t have any means to escape and Chris hesitates within the catch 22 the situation presents. He knows his men will become infected if they don’t find a way to either escape or lessen the amount of gas they’re breathing in, but shooting out the windows means the risk of infection outside of the warehouse. He’s surprised when he looks up to see Jill staring at him with that crazy calm in her eyes-- the look a soldier gets when they’ve been in the war zone long enough that the battle comes to them easy as breathing-- and watches as she turns and shoots out the windows on the first floor. Her mouth is moving… she’s speaking…

“Redfield! Get it in gear!” She shouts, pushing him further down the walkway. The shove is all Chris needs to get moving and refocus himself on what’s going on. Chris takes off away from the Lepotitsa, turning sharply and swinging his assault rifle to slam the butt of the gun into the head of a zombie, which stumbles right over in time for Chris to aim his rifle and shoot it in the head as it flails feebly on the floor.

The gas has since begun seeping out of the shattered windows, alerting the other men of the cartel that intruders are around, but for some reason, reinforcements don’t show up. Chris and Jill finally make it over to the rest of the team, turning and opening fire.The rain of bullets finally do the creature in, the Lepotitsa stumbling back on the walkway and toppling over the guardrail. The blue smoke begins to dissipate out of the warehouse. Slowly, Chris lowers his gun, looking around the warehouse as visibility again returns and the blue-ish hue that covers the first floor finally thins out completely.

Jill lowers her own gun and turns, making her way down the stairs to look for the boxes of C-Virus she’d gotten photographs of just yesterday. She holsters her gun and begins searching, growing increasingly frustrated. They lost their witness and it looks like the injection pens aren’t in the warehouse. “God damn it!”

Chris walks down the stairs and over to Jill, grim frown carved over his features. “What is it?”

“They’re not here. The damn boxes aren’t here. They must’ve taken them out this morning…” Jill pulls her cap off to brush her bangs back under it and replace it, exasperated and angry. Chris takes a deep breath to gather his thoughts and figure out what their next step is. He looks to the rest of his team as they make their way down the steps back to the first floor.

“Alright. Jill… do you know where this big showdown is supposed to be happening?” He looks at Jill hopefully, who looks up at him with that same focused look in her eyes and nods slowly.

“Yes. I can take us there.”

“Good. Listen up.” He turns to the rest of his subordinates. “The C-Virus is officially out on the streets. It’s extremely likely that we’ve got J’avo out there already, too. When Valentine gets us to where we need to be, we target the infected _first_. We need someone not infected left alive for information.”

His men nod in affirmative to indicate they understand their captain’s orders, and Jill heads for one of the doors, looking around warily before stepping out.

\---

It’s a quiet market with stands of fruit and vegetables, packaged goods, clothes and handmade items. There are booths filled with candles and religious paraphernalia and there are also booths filled with the strange and imported. People meander around in peaceful commerce and in the normalcy of the bustling street, an onlooker would find it hard to believe that this is the chosen battleground of the cartels.

That is, until a loud ‘thum’ of a flare gun firing, and a flare blasting mid-air because of it. As soon as the flare is seen by the people in the market, all hell breaks loose. Men grab submachine guns out from under piles of mangoes and melons, turning to fire at other men on the other side of the market, and shouts of anger and hatred are a chorus of colorful Spanish.

Chris squints from his vantage point on the roof of a storefront right next to the market square, expression bleak as he overlooks the damage. The rest of his team quickly double-checks that their firearms are fully loaded as Chris figures out where to position them all on this chaotic chess board. He straightens up and turns to the operatives before him. “Alright. Wilson, Bergman, I need you two to stay here to cover the rest of us. Do what you do best. Henreid, Roberts-- you take the south side. Romero and Brooks will take the north and Valentine and me will take the east. If you can apprehend one of them alive and uninfected, do it.”

There’s a chorus of ‘yes, Captain’s around the group before they promptly get into their positions, either finding a good location to snipe from or climbing down off the roof to get to where they need to be. Jill and Chris make their way around the actual gunfight towards the east entrance to the market square when one of the Sinaloa thugs scrambles out of a booth, spotting the pair of them. Despite there being no identifying emblems on their uniforms, the thug knows that they’re trained and that he doesn’t stand a chance. He grabs a white injection pen out of his cargo shorts and jams it into his neck, injecting himself.

“Open fire!” Chris barks, rounding on the transforming J’avo and opening fire on it to stop it in its tracks. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the only thug to resort to its injection pen, and soon half-grasshopper J’avo are added to the ranks in the middle of this bloody gang war. Jill and Chris both manage to make it to the top of a booth at the East entrance, a chorus of loud engines sounding nearby.

“What is that…?” Jill asks, Beretta raised as she turns to look for the source of the noise. Before Chris can hazard a guess while he shoots a couple of J’avo in the head, Jill’s question in answered. The Hermasillo Police Department tears into the market square in squad cars, opening their doors and storming out of their vehicles, immediately opening fire on the Sinaloa Cartel.

“No real distinguishing attire to tell which gang is which but those cops already know who to shoot at.” Chris observes as the cops fire both J’avo as well as certain non-infected thugs. Jill opens fire on a couple of J’avo to their left hiding behind a watermelon stand.

“I told you, just about every office in this city is corrupt.” Jill replies darkly, reloading her Beretta. They both open fire yet again as a new wave of J’avo crawl out of the woodwork. The Beltrán Levya men and the police begin to panic, firing anywhere and everywhere, a stray bullet shooting upwards at just the right angle and clipping Henreid right in the shoulder. The operative is unable to hold back a pained cry and Chris growls under his breath, shooting the guilty J’avo through the head until there isn’t a head left on its shoulders.

Jill glances at Chris warily, noticing the rage the sight of one of his men injured causes him. She quickly dispatches of a couple more J’avo before turning to Chris and muttering. “He’s going to be alright, Chris. Let’s just get this job done and apprehend an informant.”

Chris nods, turning and firing at another Sinaloa Cartel member right after he injects himself with his injection pen and begins to mutate. The shots cause a chain reaction in the new J’avo’s body, and the J’avo suddenly encases itself in a slimy green cocoon. Chris backs away and opens fire on the cocoon next, hoping that doing so will weaken it further by the time it hatches. As soon as it starts to hatch, Chris drops down off the roof of the booth to stand on its level.

“Chris!” Jill quickly follows Chris down below, watching as the cocoon hatches into a colossal, armored beast. Chris continues to fire at the Napad while Jill holsters her Beretta and pulls the shotgun out of its holster on her back, opening fire at the Napad alongside her former partner. It’s only a few more rounds from the pair of them before the armor on the Napad shatters painfully, leaving the creature exposed to more gunfire. A couple more rounds and the beast is finally defeated.

Jill spins around when a bullet whizzes over her shoulder, narrowly missing her, and finds a non-infected thug looking right at her while he tries desperately to reload his firearm before she can attack him. In the time it takes him to do so, Jill takes two long strides towards him, building a momentum to bring her left foot down onto his knee for support and swing her right knee around into his head, dropping the thug effortlessly. She pulls out another black zip-tie and binds the criminal’s wrists behind his back, dragging him out of the crossfire behind a relatively unharmed booth.

“Got what you were looking for?” Chris calls to her, and she nods from where she’s crouched behind the booth, reloading her Beretta and quickly opening fire on the remaining J’avo. Chris does much the same and it isn’t long before all the infected are taken care of, and the Hermasillo Police that are still alive are arresting any of the Sinaloa Cartel that are still human. Chris backs up as one of the officers rounds on him, shouting at him in Spanish. “Uh… crap.”

“Hit the deck!” One of Chris’ men shouts before throwing a canister from his vantage point on the roof into the market square below. The canister goes off, filling the market with thick, light gray smoke. Jill and Chris use the diversion to drag their unconscious informant down one of the side alleys and over to where the rest of the team is waiting in the wings. Pleased that something went right, Jill nudges Chris’ arm as they drag the informant away.

\---

The sun is setting on the third day since Piers called Chris’ cell phone. Chris sits in a chair, gloves tucked into a pocket on his vest, hands folded in front of his mouth with his elbows on his knees. He’s hunched forward and he’s waiting. He looks over at the door on the other side of the room, where Jill is with their informant. She’s speaking quietly in Spanish, a male voice is answering her in the same language, and Chris is praying that it’s the answers that they want to hear.

The door opens and Jill comes out, looking tired. She looks over at Chris, who is looking at her with too much hope in his brown eyes for her to not feel like an asshole when she shakes her head. She watches as Chris’ jaw visibly clenches and he slowly rises from his chair. He walks past her, into the interrogation room, and shuts the door behind himself.

Jill walks over to two of the men from their team sitting on a beat-up couch in the house of a retired BSAA agent. Vasquez used to work for the South America branch and it cost her an arm. Still, she was happy to give the team a place to rest and interrogate their new informant… Jill looks at Bergman expectantly. “Any word from Roberts about Henreid?”

“He’ll need stitches but the bullet went clean through. They’ll be back in no time.” Bergman answers, earning an approving nod from Jill. She then turns and walks over to the door Chris is on the other side of, leaning beside the doorjamb and trying her best to eavesdrop. It’s unsettlingly quiet.

Chris looks over at the thug, who is tied into a chair at the dining room table. Slowly, Chris walks over and sits opposite the man at the table, where there’s an empty glass and a pitcher of water. Chris pours himself a glass and takes a couple of gulps, the thug watching him nervously the entire time. He slowly puts the glass back down on the table. The man at the other side of the table tries to shift in his seat, but Romero tied those knots, and Chris has never doubted the skills of a man who was formerly in the Navy.

He slowly rises from his seat, eyes never leaving the informant, palms flat on the dining table. The silence is tense and uncomfortable, like some kind of venomous creature breathing down their necks, poised to strike them both down.

In the blink of an eye, the dining table is upside down a foot away and the man tied into the chair is shaking and shouting in Spanish. Chris kicks the man’s chair over as he draws out his pistol and aims. The man’s Spanish speeds up and grows more frantic as he watches the red laser sight stop between his legs, and he must’ve said something that they wanted to hear because Jill opens the door a moment later, rather than when she heard the crashing noise of Chris flipping the dining table clean over.

Jill walks over, questioning the man fiercely in Spanish, not trying to make Chris direct his pistol elsewhere. The thug pleads, shaking his head and stuttering a response to her. Jill shouts at him angrily, and the thug shakes his head again. Chris shakes his head right back and then pulls the trigger. The man screams at the top of his lungs as he shakes, two words over and over. “¡La Familia! ¡La Familia!”

Chris holsters his pistol as the man settles down and looks at the damage between his legs and realizes that Chris shot the base of the seat, leaving the man’s nether-regions unharmed. Chris turns on his heel and leaves the dining room, barking to one of his men. “Brooks, get a mop.”

Jill comes out a moment later, walking into the kitchen where Chris is leaning over the kitchen counter, one of the BSAA laptops open in front of him, pictures in a file on the screen. An emblem with snakes on it, a picture of former National Security Advisor Derek C. Simmons, and a picture of a laboratory with chrysalides in tanks are all up on the file. Jill looks over the pictures grimly. “The Family.”

“The Family.” Chris repeats darkly, glancing at Jill warily.


	3. Emissary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things go from violent to confusing in about the time it takes Chris and Jill to reload their guns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I didn't have this out sooner. I now have a job, so expect this to be updated weekly rather than bi-weekly now.

"Captain Redfield." The operator's face is on the computer screen, staring at Chris with a determined frown on his features. "New information has been received. Alpha team is instructed to return back to base immediately, and Agent Valentine is to accompany Alpha team as well."

Chris frowns at the operator, then looks up to the webcam lens in the top of the laptop’s frame. “We’ve gathered vital information about a criminal organization using BOWs here in Mexico. We’re not going anywhere.”

“The South America branch of the BSAA has been informed of the situation and will launch a local investigation of the area.” The operator repeats. “Alpha team is instructed to return back to base immediately. With Agent Valentine.”

“Negative, Base.” Jill interjects. “The South America BSAA isn’t equipped for this situation. Alpha team is needed here.”

“This is an executive order, Ma’am.” The Operator says gravely. “If Alpha team isn’t back at HQ in 24 hours, all team members will be taken off active duty and be placed under internal investigation.”

The line cuts out, and Chris curses under his breath. He looks to Jill, looking just as confused as she does. “An executive order…? We had to deal with a mass infection in China and weren’t given an executive order to pull out.”

Executive orders come direct from the BSAA’s backers-- the United Nations-- and for something to warrant such a motion, it’d have to be something serious or something unsavory. Jill shakes her head, uneasy and suspicious. “Something’s going on.”

Chris turns to his subordinates waiting in the living room. “Alright, men. HQ just gave us new orders to return home.”

Jill chimes in, glancing at Chris. “Bergman, that means you’re in charge. You’re taking the rest of the team back to HQ. Captain Redfield and I are staying here to continue the investigation.”

“If anyone asks questions, ma’am,” Bergman interjects, looking between Jill and Chris. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Exactly.” Chris nods in approval. “We’ll get to the bottom of this when we get back from our current mission. In the mean time, follow your orders and keep your mouths shut.”

\---

“The Family was run by Derek C. Simmons before his death in China.” Jill states what Chris told her and what she read from the Harper-Kennedy report that was submitted when Leon Kennedy and Helena Harper returned to the United States with evidence that proved their innocence in the Tall Oaks incident.

“That’s right.” Chris answers, cleaning his assault rifle while he sits on one of the two twin beds in the hotel room the pair of them are checked into for 24 hours. They both felt it rude to hide out at a former BSAA member’s house after disobeying direct orders from the organization. “The Family didn’t die with him unfortunately. Supposedly, they’re the ones who have been running the United States from behind the scenes for years.”

“This sounds like something out of an espionage movie.” Jill sighs softly, sitting on her own bed with the field laptop on her lap and a small satellite pointed at the nearest window, its purpose to make it difficult for their signal to track while Jill tries to find out more about the Family.

“Yeah, sounds like…” Chris chuckles, but the smile on his face fades quickly as he reassembles his assault rifle. It’s replaced with a worried, anxious expression; Jill knows what he’s thinking of as soon as she sees it.

“We’re going to find him.” She says with a determined resolve. “The cartel are working with the Family, or at least buying from them. We find ourselves another member of the cartel and we get some answers on how to find the Family and we go from there. There’s no way he just randomly disappeared…”

But Chris is having doubts, considering all he has is the location of where the phone call had been placed, and the fact it happens to be in Sinaloa territory. It doesn’t tell them much of anything; the fact the Sinaloa are buying bioweaponry from the Family could be a cruel coincidence and nothing more. A knock comes to the hotel room door and they both look at the door like it just said something offensive. Jill checks that her Beretta is loaded and then gets to her feet, walking over to the door and peering out of the spyhole. She glances at Chris with a puzzled expression. “Did you order room service?”

Chris shakes his head, only to jump as the glass of the window shatters and then bullets start flying. Jill rolls onto the ground from where she’d been standing in front of the door and out of the line of fire from the window. At the same time, the person on the other side of the door opens fire, bullets shooting clean through the hotel room door.

Chris and Jill move quickly, grabbing what of their equipment that they can and ducking into the adjoined bathroom. Chris shoves the window open, quickly scoping out the area and ducking sharply, hearing the bullets whiz right over his head and lodge themselves in the tiles of the bathroom wall. Jill curses under her breath and pulls the top back on her Beretta to put a bullet in the chamber. Chris looks over at her with an impatient, withering frown. “Just stay down. I’ll cover you.”

Jill huffs and slumps down onto the floor to tug her boots back on, lacing them up as quickly as she can. Chris peers over the edge of the bathroom window, spotting one of the snipers up on the neighboring roof reloading his rifle. Perfect opportunity. He aims and he fires. “They’re dressed nicely, maybe they're high-rankers in the Cartel?”

“Possibly.” Jill frowns peering into the hotel room slowly as the hail of bullets stops. She whispers to him. “I doubt it.”

Whoever opened fire on the hotel room door makes a big mistake: he opens the door. Jill is up, gun aimed, and opens fire on him, the suited man falling to the floor. She dives over to him, rummaging through his suit until she finds what she needs-- his PDA. Quickly, Jill pockets it in one of the pockets on her cargo pants and crawls back over to the bathroom. “Got the guy's PDA. We can leave now.”

Chris darts out of the bathroom with Jill, the pair of them tearing out of the hotel room as bullets continue to fly around them. It’s a blur of adrenaline and tunnel vision, trying to get out, trying to get clear. Keep your head low, keep your finger on the trigger, don’t trip, don’t look back. Chris turns the corner as a couple more black suits step into the hallway, and Jill quickly turns her back to Chris’ and gives him covering fire. It gives Chris just enough leeway to lift his assault rifle and go to town.

He strides down the hall towards the men in suits as he opens fire, three bullets per offender, before kicking open the emergency stairway door and grabbing Jill by the back of her gun holster to yank her in. Jill yelps in surprise and tugs away. “Do I look like a Yorkie? Cut it out.”

They manage to make it down the stairs without any more suits coming at them, and Chris makes an observation. “I’m pretty sure these guys aren’t with the Cartel. Their suits are standard issue, not designer.”

“I noticed.” Jill answers, glancing around warily when they get to the bottom of the stairs, the exit door right in front of them. Jill slowly approaches the door and peers out the window, only to have it shatter, a few small pieces of glass cutting at her cheek. She scrambles back away from it, leaning back against the wall out of the view of the door window. “Damn it!”

Chris reaches into the duffel bag slung over his shoulder and pulls out a pair of canisters-- a flash bomb and a smoke bomb, yanking out the pin of the flash bomb with his teeth before flinging it through the door window. Jill and Chris close their eyes and look away from it before Chris yanks out the pin of the smoke bomb and flings that outside for good measure too. Jill claps a hand over her mouth and nose, reaching over to the door handle and quietly unlatching the door before yanking it open.

They take off running through the smoke, their attackers blinded or too disorientated to locate them in the haze. Jill skids over the hood of a beat up sedan and gets in the driver’s seat while Chris tosses the duffel bag into the backseat, assault rifle still in his hands as he gets into the front passenger seat. By the time he shuts the door, Jill finishes hotwiring the car and is peeling out of the parking space like a bat out of hell.

“Here.” She hands him the PDA. “Get what you can outta that quickly and get rid of it.”

“I know,” Chris replies, turning on the PDA and flipping through the screen. “Guess who.”

“Who?” Jill glances at Chris as he holds up the phone in time for her to catch a glimpse of a serpent emblem in the corner of the screen. “Son of a bitch.”

“You got that right. They knew we were looking for them. How much do you want to bet they’re behind the executive order?” Chris muses, flipping through the screen for anything interesting. He pulls up a map and frowns at it, pulling out his own BSAA phone and copying down the directions the PDA had saved. “Let's take a look at where they came from.”

“Where is it?” Jill asks, shifting gears.

“Durango.” Chris answers. “Take us about a day to get there.”

“Guess we better hurry, huh?” Jill sighs heavily. “We’ll ditch the car for something else once we get out of town.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Chris agrees, reclining the seat just a little.

\---

It’s nightfall by the time they get to Durango. Jill parks the car-- a yellow hatchback around the same age as the sedan was-- a short walk away from the address. The pair get out of the car and keep low as they make their way to the fenceline of the property, Jill pulling out a pair of binoculars and peering over at the large sign up front. “Supposedly, this place is a manufacturing plant for toys and toy parts.”

“Then why does this place need so many armed guards…?” Chris wonders quietly, a pair of binoculars in his hands as well, scoping out the roof and areas around the property line. Satisfied he’s seen enough, Chris tucks away his binoculars and pulls out a multi-tool. He starts cutting open the links on the chain fence, going under and through the fence rather than trying to brave the barbed wire lining the top of the fence line. He half-expects some kind of electric shock, but nothing happens. Once he cuts enough for both of them to squeeze through, Chris tucks the tool away and pushes through the hole in the fence, Jill following after him. Jill pulls out her Beretta, alert and keeping watch as Chris double-checks that his assault rifle is loaded.

Chris leads them over to the large building before them, gun raised as he searches around for any possible guards that would spring to attack the compound intruders, thus far, the only ones they’ve seen have been in the distance, patrolling other parts of the compound. Finding no one nearby, Chris taps on Jill’s shoulder and she moves in front of him to the door. Quickly she pulls out her lock picking kit and gets to work on the electronic lock on the door, removing the panel and revealing the circuitry inside. She tinkers with the lock’s indisde until there’s an audible click from the door as reward. Jill smirks and opens the door for Chris, earning a roll of his eyes with her smug expression.

Once the pair is in the compound, the fun is over. It’s all industrial PVC piping and thick electrical wiring along the ceiling, with sterile walls and floors, and eerie, humming silence. Jill looks to Chris, smile replaces with a serious scowl, and she murmurs quietly to Chris. “This is definitely a major facility for them. They’ve got to be distributing the C-Virus from here.”

“Obviously.” Chris answers, frowning as he slowly leads the way forward. So far, no alarms have sounded that there are intruders and it’s cause for suspicion. There’s no way the Family’s viral distribution center would be a cakewalk to infiltrate. Jill presses to the wall as Chris peers around the corner. They see no one and nothing along the hallway save for a few doors.

Chris makes his way down the hall and tries one of the doors, finding it locked. Conveniently, there are labels on all of the doors, and Jill reads them each. “Supply closet, records and information. Meeting Room 1A.”

“You know which one I want in.” Chris motions to the room titled “Records and Information”. Jill hurries over to the door and yet again displays her aptitude for breaking into places that are supposed to be secure. After a couple of moments of picking at the lock with her tools, she has the door open and is stepping inside. Jill tucks her earpiece into her ear and turns on the light on it, rather than flicking on the light switch in order to look around. Chris does the same thing, heading over to one of the filing cabinets in the room and pulling it open, flipping through it curiously in the dark. Jill walks over to one of the computers and gets to work figuring it out in order to find any kind of information that she can.

“They’ve got files on just about every virus based off the progenitor virus in here…” Chris states, frowning at the pictures and words he finds in every folder. “Most of this stuff isn’t recent, though… looks like collected information from outside sources.”

“Yeah… That’s not all they’ve got. They’ve been running experiments with the T-Virus, the G-Virus, and the C-Virus at various stages, trying to perfect the C-Virus further somehow…” Jill skims over the files she manages to pull up on the computer. “They’ve even got their hands on data from Tricell, Chris…”

Chris curses under his breath and quickly grabs a couple of the hard-copy files that he thinks might be useful, tucking them away between his shirt and his MOLLE vest before he turns and walks over to the desk that Jill’s leaning over, typing away on the computer. “What else did you find?”

“Their latest projects…” Jill answers, noticing a file with a camera for an icon and the file name ‘PN-001’ on it. Jill slides the mouse over the icon and clicks on it to open the file, raising her eyebrows when she sees it’s a live security camera feed, as well as what it’s filming.

On the feed, strapped into a standing bed, seemingly unconscious, is Piers Nivans. Chris leans forward, looking at the screen as though in disbelief, unable to bring his voice above a whisper. “Piers… he is alive.”

Piers isn’t wearing his uniform and he doesn’t look like the transforming monster that Chris last saw him as, though Chris winces internally at the scarring along Piers’ arm and face that is visible on the security feed. Instead, Piers is wearing simple scrub pants and that’s it. Wires feed into his un-scarred arm and his eyes are closed. Chris straightens up, speaking to Jill. “Where is he?”

Quickly Jill types in a few commands into the computer before she gets her answer. She points to a location on a map that her query ends up pulling up on the computer, and she quickly types up some other commands on the computer until the room turns green on the map. “Alright. The door’s unlocked now. Let me get this data copied onto a flash drive, then we can get Piers and get the hell out of here.”

But Chris doesn’t wait for Jill to finish what she’s working on, turning and striding out of the room. He makes his way down the hallway, the image of Piers strapped into the standing bed burned into his mind, which is wondering on repeat just what the hell these sick bastards have done to Piers. Jill is proof enough in Chris’ mind that when there’s enough money and power on the table, and not enough of a conscience, that there is no limit to the cruelty inflicted on good people for the supposed sake of science.

Chris turns the corner and sees the door with the number of the room Piers is being kept in, speeding up into a sprint to the door. He makes it after what feels like minutes and yanks the door open, hurrying inside. Chris looks around the room, assault rifle loaded and raised as he looks over all the machinery and equipment lining the walls of the room, pausing when he sees the standing bed at the far end of the room.

“Piers…!” Chris rushes over to the bed as Jill catches up and dashes into the room after him in time to see Chris trying to figure out how to turn off all the monitors that Piers is hooked up to, needles of various sizes stabbing into his arm.

“Christ…” Jill marvels sadly, looking over the monitors with the same uncertainty. She reads what is being fed into Piers’ system via certain drips, while she determines which ones are actually slowly drawing blood instead. When she pauses at one of the monitors, her heart stops. “Oh no…”

“What is it?” Chris looks at her, then to the monitor. The small screen on it reads “P30-PN-001 : 97%” then promptly changes to a 99%. Jill reads out the line underneath that aloud.

“P30 Intravenous Unit Model A-Nine.” She says grimly, looking to Chris as she fights against the icy chill that runs down her spine and makes her skin crawl. “I thought we got rid of this stuff when we stopped Wesker.”

“Apparently he had more out on the market than we could keep up with.” Chris answers darkly, watching as the monitor flicks to 100% and a beeping noise sounds suddenly from all of the monitors beside the bed. The straps snap open on their own and a pained grunt comes from Piers’ mouth. Chris and Jill both slowly step back away from Piers, not at all certain just what kind of reaction they’re going to get from the former BSAA operative.

Piers drops to the floor onto his hands and knees with another pained groan. Slowly, Piers gets to his feet, reaching to the IV needles in his arm and grabs them all by their chords and yanks until they all tear out of his flesh, blood trailing down his arm in tiny slivers of crimson. Slowly, he straightens up to his full height, opening his eyes to look at Chris and Jill. Those eyes… that are no longer human in appearance, but catlike and silvery-green, just as Chris remembers one of Piers’ eyes being in the escape pod room in that underwater oil field.

“Piers.” He says before he can stop himself, not wanting to grab for his assault rifle, not wanting to fight another one of his men, another one of his teammates, another one of his _friends_. But Jill knows the P30 better than anyone-- lived with the poison flowing through her veins for years-- and unholsters her Beretta and aims it right and Piers.

“No, Chris.” She says grimly. “Don’t drop your guard.”

“Oh, pity…” A modulated electronic voice speaks from PA speakers in the ceiling. “We were hoping that you might try to plead with him.”

Chris growls angrily under his breath, looking to the ceiling briefly as he backs away further from Piers. “Why don’t you people stop hiding like cowards and get the real fight started? In the open?”

“We’re working on that, don’t worry. In the mean time… _attack_.” And as soon as the clicking noise of someone hanging up the PA receiver clicks, Piers dashes forward, tackling Chris to the ground. Straddling him, Piers fists a hand in Chris’ shirt, reeling tight fist back and launching it forward, throwing his weight in to punch after punch until--

“Hey!” Jill cries, then opens fire on Piers, shooting his shoulder and knocking him back. The bullet goes straight through and Piers gets to his feet, the bullet wound smoking as it slowly disappears completely from his skin. “Oh, shit…”

Piers rushes at Jill, only to get tripped up as Chris rolls over onto his stomach at the right moment and grabs Piers’ ankle. He twists and yanks, feeling things move and snap under Piers skin that aren’t meant to move and break and guilt twists in his guts at inflicting that much pain on his former teammate. Piers drops with a grunt, then kicks Chris in the face with his good foot, then sits up to grab Chris’ rifle off of his shoulder and aim it right at him. Chris looks up with that pained, but alarmed, look all over his face. Piers has his finger on the trigger but he doesn’t fire.

He hears the sound of Jill moving in a little closer and whips around, raising the assault rifle and curling his finger tighter around the trigger. In that moment, time seems to slow down and stop altogether. Chris feels himself moving automatically, drawing the knife from his boot and raising it enough to plunge it into a point near the base of Piers’ neck for a kill. He’s gripping the handle of the knife so tightly his knuckles are white and he knows he’s talking or making some kind of noise as the rifle goes off and Jill ducks out of the line of fire, skidding along the tile flooring.

“Oh, god…” Chris chokes out, looking at the blood as it pools out of the wound once he yanks the blade out and Piers drops the assault rifle to the floor as he collapses backward. He curls in on himself, his own blood starting to steam as it comes into contact with his skin. Anxiously Chris reaches for him, profuse apologies already ghosting over his lips until he jumps, bewildered as he watches a chrysalid begins to form over Piers’ body. Instant cause for panic, Chris gets to his feet, leaning over the cocoon with no idea just what to do about it, or rather having no urge to do what he knows he must and open fire on it with his discarded assault rifle.

Jill gets to her feet, whipping around with her Beretta raised to fire at the chrysalid. Chris darts in front of her, grabbing the top of the Beretta and forcing Jill’s aim to the floor right in front of her instead. “No..!”

“Chris, he’s going to come out of that thing some kind of monster and you know it!” She snaps at him, frustrated with the way Chris has acted since they got into the compound. “I _know_ that it isn’t fair, but we have a bigger mission we’ve still got to see through. Let’s just put him out of his misery and _get out of here_ …!”

“No! Why would they need the P30 for him if he’s just like all the other things that the C-Virus has made? How the hell did he survive the oil field? He didn’t look like that the last time I saw him, Jill…” Chris turns to face the cocoon once he hears a cracking noise from it and watches warily as the cocoon begins to crack open, a human groan coming from within it. “…what the hell?”

Sure enough, Piers begins to pry his chrysalid open, crawling out of it oozy and healed, looking up at them both blearily before collapsing. Chris and Jill just stand there staring at him for a couple of moments, waiting until they’re certain he’s truly unconscious before Chris picks Piers up, carrying him on his back, and starts moving.

Jill holsters her Beretta in favor of her shotgun strapped to her back, checking that it’s fully loaded before she leads Chris and Piers out of the room. They fight their way to the exit, past suited guards, and when the compound starts to send J’avo their way, things start to get stranger. The J’avo move in for the attack down the hallway, guns raised and poised to open fire when they somehow sense something odd, like animals catching a scent on the wind. A couple of them look directly at Piers’ head lulled onto Chris’ shoulder as he carries him and begin to back off. They fire at Jill instead and the seasoned BSAA agent holds her own effectively.

She chocks it up to a perfect blend of skill and luck that they make it to one of the exits. They sneak along the outskirts of the compound with Jill in the lead keeping watch. The three of them make it to the gap in the fence that Chris cut earlier and Jill crawls through first, helping Chris guide Piers’ unconscious form through before he crawls through himself and picks Piers back up. They find the hatchback right where they left it behind a few trees, and Chris lays Piers out on the back seat before getting in the driver’s seat, starting the car. Jill hops in on the front passenger’s side after tucking her shotgun away. “Come on.”

Mind still reeling from what happened in the compound, Chris shifts gears and tears out of the woods and onto the road, speeding away into the night. His hands grip the steering wheel as he glares out the front windshield, glancing occasionally at Piers through the rearview mirror, not sure he wants Piers to come to just yet. “Did you get a look at any of the files you downloaded from their database? Is there anything in there on him?”

“No, I didn’t, but there’s got to be plenty in there on him either way… they had blood drawn and everything from him thanks to those monitors. God only knows what else happened…” Jill trails off, glancing at Chris, watching the muscle in his jaw tense at her words. “He’s going to be okay, Chris. We have all this data that we can work with to help him.”

“…the J’avo didn’t want to hurt him. Didn’t want anything to do with him.” Chris observes bleakly.

“I know. We’re going to figure this out, once we find a safe place to hole up.” Jill replies readily, trying her best to reassure and center Chris in the current predicament. Chris nods, looking somewhat consoled by her words.

“So lets find ourselves a place to stay.” He sighs, glancing at Jill briefly before returning his eyes to the road. He glances at the rearview, looking over Piers’ half-scarred face, and looks back to the road with more determination in his eyes than before.


	4. Miasma

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Piers back where he belongs, he, Chris and Jill need to figure out where to go and who to talk to in order to get the information they need.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's a short chapter. Most of them will probably be short with work and everything going on. But it's something at least, right? Yes, this one lives up to 99% of its tags, so I hope you all enjoy.

Piers isn’t sure how long he has been out-- it feels like weeks, but for all he knows it could only be hours. The drugs they’ve been feeding him through the IV make it difficult for him to say for sure just how long he’s been under. He manages to shift in and out of consciousness enough to crack his eyes open now and then, and all the times before that he managed it, Piers saw the various machines and monitors surrounding the standing bed, the clean white walls and floors. This time, however, when he manages to will his eyes open, it’s somewhere else entirely.

Piers realizes that he doesn't feel uncomfortable as he had when he’d been strapped into the standing bed. No, he feels as though he’s laying down properly, horizontally, and the bed he’s in is lumpy and full of springs rather than memory foam. He grunts softly, trying to figure out just where he is and what’s so different when he turns his head that half an inch to find something unexpected in his line of vision.

Chris is sitting backwards in a chair, legs on either side of the back and arms folded over the top of it, forehead resting on his forearms, face hidden. But Piers doesn’t need to see his face to know that it’s Chris, and he manages to rasp out a single word, relieved in its tone despite its dryness. “Chris…”

Chris’ head shoots up from his arms, brown eyes wide in hope and disbelief, and launches to his feet, shouting for Jill. “Jill! He’s awake!”

Just as quickly as Chris launched himself out of the chair he was slumped in, he turns the chair around and sits back down, pulling it closer to the bed. He looks Piers over as though he hasn’t been watching over the sniper like a hawk since they got to their little hideout. “I thought you were dead.”

“Can’t get rid of me that easy, Captain.” Piers answers, voice still a little rough from disuse. He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment before opening them again, looking up at Chris as his vision clears and sharpens just enough for him to make out the dark circles under Chris’ eyes. “…you haven’t slept.”

“I had to keep an eye on you.” Chris answers, and his reasoning is valid. “They gave you the P30 compound that Tricell was selling on the black market for a while.”

“I know." Piers answers grimly, looking up at Chris with that kicked puppy look on his face. "It's coming back to me now... the fight. You and Valentine both trying to... I just couldn't stop myself. I tried, Captain.."

"You don't have to explain yourself to me, Piers. I know you couldn't help it. Not my first time with that shit." Chris answers, not even considering holding what happened at the compound against Piers. "Point is that you're okay now."

Piers decides he's going to have to be the one to address the elephant in the room, gazing at Chris for a long moment before he finally asks. "...if I'm okay now, can we unstrap me from this?"

Chris looks to the thick leather straps binding Piers' wrists and ankles to the guardrail of the beat up hospital bed of the abandoned asylum that they're currently taking refuge in. Most of the locals think the place to be haunted, making the location a perfect place for them to hide away from the Family's questing spies. While the building is neglected and not the cleanest hideout, it’s not utterly uninhabitable and dilapidated. Chris reaches out and begins to unbuckle Piers from the bed, muttering an apology. "Yeah... sorry. We just had to be sure the P30 burned out of your system..."

"It might've when I, uh..." Piers isn't entirely sure how to word what he did in the room they'd been keeping him in, other than the blunt 'turned myself into a slime-burrito' that immediately comes to his mind. "...it sort of happens on its own. I get hurt enough it just..."

"I know." Chris answers, getting to his feet and going to the straps around Piers' ankles underneath the scratchy cot blanket on the bed. "We got quite a few files from their records on you... but just data. No samples and no coding or genomes."

"No... they're keeping that somewhere else.." Piers' voice loses its resolve halfway through the sentence and he looks up at his captain uncertainly as Chris leans forward and unbuckles the belts holding Piers' ankles. "Captain... you know you shouldn't have come to find me. Or kept me here like this. Or... Look at me."

Chris looks up as he finishes freeing Piers' second ankle, having known that this discussion was going to happen sooner or later. "When you called me I told you that I was going to come and get you. You think I'd go back on my word like that?"

"I'm a walking biohazard, Captain. And you know it." Piers answers roughly, accusatorily. "They're not going to stop until they find me, and when they do they're going to use me to make a bigger, better BOW of some kind... that's what people like them do."

"And when they prove they're stupid enough to try it, we'll arrest them." Chris says it like it's the simplest solution to the current predicament they're facing and Piers' frustration gets the better of him as he slowly sits up. "We're the BSAA, Piers. This is what we do for a living."

"Chris...!" Piers snaps in exasperation. "Have you read _any_ of the files that they have on me?"

"Yes, Piers." Chris sighs heavily, walking back over to the chair and taking a seat. He scrubs a hand over his face, in that particular moment feeling too old and too tired for this much stress. "...the C-Virus adapted and fully bonded to your DNA thanks to the improvements made to the C-Virus after Neo-Umbrella captured Jake Muller for testing. Out of the people who were infected with the improved C-Virus, you're the only one still alive."

"And I'm not human anymore, Captain..." Piers says, voicing something that had been nagging at the back of his mind over and over again like a self-loathing mantra since he came to on that beach fresh out of a cocoon. He had infected himself to save his captain, and he went down that road knowing that he'd die in the end, thereby further ensuring Chris' survival and that the C-Virus would not spread because of him. But that plan went straight to hell and now Piers is facing his mistake head-on simply by looking in the goddamn mirror.

"The hell you're not." Chris says suddenly, defensively, looking up at Piers with that intense scowl that intimidated Piers when he'd first began work on Alpha team. Piers scowls right back at him now, no longer afraid of his commanding officer. "I mean it... you're not like anyone who was infected before or since. They couldn't figure out why you're not responsive to dominant C-Virus infectees, and that's why they had to give you the P30 to make you obey their orders."

"I... no. There's still a chance I could snap and transform into something terrible." Piers answers, honestly having no idea just how far the experiments went, just what the whitecoats found out about him through his blood and through their tests.

"Their notes say that its unlikely, unless you're given something unstable, and it's a gamble that they weren't willing to take. So..." Chris sighs heavily. "We've just got to make sure we don't let you eat food after midnight."

Piers gives his captain an unamused frown, but the joke does make him feel a little better even if he won't admit it. Jill walks into the room in time to see the pair of them chuckle quietly together and she can't help the small smile that tugs at the corners of her mouth. She walks over to the bed, resting a hand on the back of Chris' chair. "Hey, Piers... nice to see you up and coherent."

Piers looks up at Jill and gives her a small smile. He always got along with Jill, though he could never really place why she'd decided to become a solitary Special Operations Agent after she'd returned to the BSAA from Wesker's captivity, and never asked Chris why either. It was her business, and on the rare missions that she and Piers did have together, they worked well in the team they were in. "Hi, Jill... how did you guys find me?"

"It's a bit of a long story and Chris is better at explaining things than I am." Jill says, looking to Chris expectantly. Chris sighs softly and turns to look at Jill with that sarcastic quirk to his mouth. Finally, he turns to Piers and nods gently in acceptance of his newfound duty as storyteller to his subordinate.

"You were in the custody of the Family." Chris explains, looking to Piers' face for some sign of recognition. "From what we gathered from a report given to us by Leon S. Kennedy and Helena Harper, the Family is a top secret organization credited with running the United States from behind the scenes for years, possibly longer. We're not sure."

"And they had me because sometimes when they're running the world, they need to manufacture a bio-terrorist attack...?" Piers deduces, remembering what Kennedy had said in that medical research facility when he and Chris had been trying to apprehend Ada Wong and Kennedy had stopped them. "Great. Another organization with unlimited power and too many resources at their disposal."

"Right." Chris agrees, nodding slowly. "They caught you off that beach in Mazatlan after you made your phone call to me. We've got reason to believe that they've had my office under surveillance and that they've got a mole inside the BSAA, because once we got here to Mexico, we received an executive order to pull out."

"Great." Piers replies bitterly, scrubbing a hand over his face and feeling his scars. He looks to Chris when he realizes that they're there, and mutters quietly. "...how bad do I look?"

"You look like you'll be a hit, Piers. You got that warrior strong silent thing you could pull off. The ladies will like it." Chris jokes further, trying to continue to make Piers feel better. Piers gives Chris an unamused frown, looking to Jill for a little honesty afterwards. Jill gives Piers a small smile.

"Your scarring is nowhere near as bad as the scars I've seen other people sporting, especially your face." She answers honestly, giving Piers a knowing look. Piers gives her a small smile in thanks before looking to his chest, seeing the scars marking where part of his chest had mutated to support the weight of his arm when he was a newly-mutated C-Virus infectee.

He recalls the pain of mutating, transforming, and the pain as he slowly drowned in the escape pod room, and the selfless act he'd done beforehand by making Chris leave without him. He looks to his captain now and sees Chris gazing back at him, quickly looking away when Piers meets his gaze. Piers stretches slowly, feels a series of pops along his back and lets out a relieved groan. "Now that the tearful reunions are over, we got any clothes for me?"

"Yeah." Chris answers, getting to his feet. "I'll go get them."

Jill watches Chris leave, waits until she sees and hears the door shut before she turns to Piers again. "We need to talk, you and me."

"Do we?" Piers asks uncertainly, watching Jill as she sits down in Chris' chair and props an ankle on the knee of the other leg.

"Yep. And we're going to talk now before Chris gets back, because it's about him." She leans forward in her seat, fixing Piers with those unnervingly bright blue eyes. "You sacrificed yourself for Chris. That makes you a hero in my book. He's been worrying his ass off over finding you since you called him."

"Why are you talking to me about this, Jill?" Piers asks, not wanting to have this conversation with Jill Valentine of all people. Chris' former partner and one of the only people who knows Chris better than Piers does. "Look-- I did sacrifice myself for Chris. He's my commanding officer, I've always looked up to him, and I know there are a lot of people who depend on him being around. It was wrong to go with him, mutate, and end up killing him in the escape pod."

"Right." Jill agrees, resting a hand on her knee. "I'll agree with that. How much do you think Chris has thought about what you did for him?"

"I don't know." Piers answers, increasingly annoyed and uncomfortable. "I didn't do it with ulterior motives in mind."

"I'm just trying to give you some food for thought." Jill answers, looking at Piers implyingly, not really wanting to have to spell it out for him.

"I'm not hungry. Just tell me what the hell you're trying to get at." Piers scowls, folding his arms in his discomfort with the conversation.

"This is your second chance, Piers. Don't waste it not being honest with him." Jill answers readily as she gets to his feet. "I'm not clueless and it's not going to be something he can't figure out for himself for much longer."

Chris comes into the room and Jill and Piers both look up at him, acting completely oblivious to what they were both just discussing as Chris walks over and offers Piers the clothes in one arm. "They’re going to be a bit too big, but it's the best we can do for now. We're trying to keep a low profile."

"The Family are looking for us." Piers elaborates to convey his understanding when it comes to emergency hand-me-downs. Jill quietly excuses herself as Piers slips out of bed. Piers looks down at himself, remembering how dirty the scrub pants had to have been after he'd hatched out of his chrysalid, and feels himself scowling in confusion at the boxers he's wearing. He glances at Chris, who has busied himself with peeling the paint of the arm of his chair. "You changed my pants."

"Yeah... they were gross by the time they dried out. We burned them." Chris answers, keeping his eyes averted even though Piers is not stark naked. Piers turns fully to face Chris, not even a foot away from him.

"Jill said she wanted to talk to me while you were getting me these." Piers motions to the clothes before he pulls on the pants, looping the belt in through the belt loops and tightening it so that the pants don't fall down too far. Chris quirks an eyebrow, curiosity peaked.

"About what?" He questions, looking to Piers' face for some kind of clue from his expression. Piers looks calm and focused on getting his belt fastened before he answers his commanding officer.

"About what I did for you and why I did it." Piers answers honestly, scratching at his hair before he shrugs on the olive green button down. He turns to face Chris, button-down still unbuttoned, with a BSAA patch on each shoulder and the name "Redfield" patched over the top of one pocket. Chris looks up at Piers, waiting for him to elaborate. Piers looks away as he finally buttons up the shirt and tucks it in. "Why I didn't go with you in the escape pod."

"Right." Chris answers, looking over the way his uniform shirt looks on Piers. Baggy around the chest and waist, though he fills in the shoulders well, but the sleeves make his arms look twice as skinny as they actually are in comparison. "...you don't have to explain yourself if you don't want to, Piers."

"No, I should." Piers answers quickly, turning to face Chris again. "I should explain. I told you I did it for the BSAA... we both know it's bullshit. I can say I saved your ass for the BSAA's sake but, uh, I did it for you. And only for you. To keep you alive because I'm the kind of selfish ass who wants to know you keep on living even if I don't."

Chris is watching Piers with every word with an unreadable, stoic expression that he puts on anytime he's thinking deeply and doesn't want to give away just what he's thinking about. He gets to his feet, looking Piers over as he does, and finally speaks. "It's not selfish. Or if it is, then I'm a selfish ass too."

Piers looks to Chris, his searching expression softening to something more relaxed, and they're both reminded of the incident at the escape pod, the way Piers had given Chris that secret, reassuring smile before the escape pod had launched. But then Chris is closing the gap between them, grabbing Piers and turning them both to pin him against the hospital room wall, and Piers is anticipating the feel of Chris holding him down and kissing him. Chris leans in to deliver on that expectation but then pauses, looking into Piers’ eyes, poised to say something new. Piers rolls his eyes and tugs Chris into a deep, eager kiss.

Just as quickly as it was started, the kiss is over because Piers pries himself away and heads for the door, muttering, “Still need to get some shoes…”

Confused, Chris follows him out of the room, noting that Piers is unfazed by the broken glass and debris here and there across the floors. He considers discussing what just happened between them, but he keeps silent as he moves to walk beside Piers down the corridor. He nudges Piers to go into one of the laboratories with its door open just a crack, and Piers complies obediently, opening the door and stepping inside.

Jill looks up from where she’s typing away on a laptop when the two of them enter. Beside the laptop is the stack of paper files that Chris took from the compound and a couple of vials of blood. Piers looks at them and deduces quickly that it’s his blood, but he speaks up to ask and confirm his suspicions. “That’s my blood, I take it.”

“Yes,” Jill answers readily. “We don’t have anything really state of the art to work with in this dump, but I took some samples for posterity’s sake… once we get back to HQ and figure out where the mole for the Family is, make our organization secure again, we’ll keep this data for records, and if we’re lucky perfect the cure to the C-Virus.”

“You mean Muller’s blood wasn’t able to make a cure…?” Piers asks, looking to Chris, the frustration creeping into his voice considering Chris and he risked their lives in order to save Jake Muller and Sherry Birkin for that express reason.

“It did but it’s not a guaranteed cure.” Jill answers. “It’s fatal to those already infected and there’s no 100% promise that it’ll protect those inoculated with it from infection.”

“Damn…” Piers sighs, disappointed with the results of their hard work. He looks to Chris. “So we’re hiding in an abandoned hospital of some kind… what’s the plan of action?”

“We were able to get files and data from the compound’s computers in their records room. There’s a lot of files that’re encrypted that we’re trying to decode so that we can read them. We don’t really have much else to go on, and these files might be able to tell us who the mole in the BSAA is, or if there are any other compounds belonging to the Family.” Chris answers, watching Piers scowl at the counter the entire time Chris gives him his explanation.

“So now it’s just a waiting game until Jill can unlock these files like she can seem to unlock just about anything.” Piers sighs softly, and Jill gives him a small grin.

“As much as I appreciate the flattery, this is far from easy for me. They’ve got the best programmers that money can buy.” Jill is unable to hold back a frustrated sigh. “This wouldn’t be a problem if we could just take it back to HQ…”

“Yeah, well… we can’t.” Chris sighs heavily, folding his arms and leaning back against the counter, standing close to Piers, who is staring out the window blankly, deep in his own thoughts.

“How about we find someone here who might be able to help us get some answers.” Piers suggests out of the blue. “Every country in the world has hackers and computer nerds. We just need to find some good ones here.”

Jill looks up thoughtfully, as though scanning through her memory for anything she’s overheard in her undercover work about hackers or anyone particularly talented with computers. She gasps softly when she makes her realization, snapping her fingers a second later. “Perfect, Piers. Great idea…!”

“What, you know someone?” Chris asks, turning to look at Jill.

“I’ve heard of someone,” Jill explains, “That apparently helped the Beltran-Levya Cartel successfully bribe the Hermasillo Police Department with electronic bank deposits that were untraceable. The police got paid, the cartel got the protection they wanted, and there were no risks of anyone getting caught in a sting operation with in-person transactions.”

“Alright, sounds promising. Who is this guy?” Chris asks curiously, straightening up. “And how do we find him?”

Jill smirks, shutting the laptop and tucking it under her arm. “You leave that to me.”

“Uh, no.” Piers speaks up, looking between them. “I’m not just going to sit here and wait around while you do your James Bond thing out there.”

“Piers, you need to keep a low profile. The Family was able to find two of the BSAA’s best-trained operatives and didn’t bat an eye at shooting up a hotel room just to make sure we didn’t get in their way.” Jill counters, getting to her feet. “I’ve been working in this kind of environment for months. If anyone can hold their own out there without any help, it’s me.”

“It’s not me trying to defend you against any big bad guys.” Piers folds his arms, looking at her with an offended frown. “I’ve been a guinea pig since I washed up on that beach. I’ve been poked at, drugged, experimented on, and generally treated like shit. Like hell I’m going to let them get away with that, and like hell I’m going to let someone else do all the hard work in order to settle the score.”

Chris is silent, letting the two sides of the argument bicker and plead their cases at the same time before he speaks up. “Alright, that’s enough. I can’t say that I blame Piers for wanting to get out there and get something done, Jill…”

“Thank you.” Piers answers readily, relieved that Chris agrees with him.

“But, Jill is right.” Chris adds, turning to Piers. “You’re their number one target right now. We can’t risk them finding where you are. We’re at a disadvantage. We’re behind enemy lines with no hope of reinforcements. You and me are staying here. Jill’s going out to find this hacker guy.”

Piers gives an unappreciative groan, turning and leaving the lab, muttering to Jill angrily. “Get me some goddamn boots while you’re out there.”

\---

It’s quiet enough that they can hear the drip-drops from the rusty, leaking pipes that wind their way through the abandoned building. Jill has been checking in every hour on the hour as per protocol for this sort of operation, Chris’ phone on vibrate instead of any of the simple beeps or rings he has for ringtones and buzzing on the table beside Piers’ bed anytime she texts that she’s alright before she calls in to confirm on her text.

Piers is sitting up on the bed, back against the wall, frowning at the phone when it vibrates again. “It’s getting dark. What the hell is she supposed to be doing in order to find this guy?”

“I don’t know. If he’s someone connected to the cartel, he’s not going to be someone that she finds right off the bat.” Chris answers, tone patient. “Jill will get what we need from him. Relax.”

And the pair of them lapse into another long span of silence. Jill left telling them both to behave themselves, as though they would run off without her or do something else that was honestly out of the question. What she was implying isn’t entirely grasping at straws, Piers admits internally, recalling the small smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth when she gave Piers a quick backward glance. And then his mind wanders to the kiss, enjoying the feel of Chris holding him down against the wall despite Piers now being an equal match to Chris in terms of strength. Somehow in that moment Piers had felt that Chris was indeed physically stronger than him and it sent a thrill through him to feel that Chris could hold him down and have his way…

Chris picks up his phone and answers the call when it comes in, exchanging a few short sentences with Jill before hanging up. His eyes never leave Piers’ face and he finally asks quietly what he’s been wondering since Jill left. “What are you thinking about?”

“Huh?” Piers asks distractedly before he finally looks Chris in the eye. “Oh. Nothing, just thinking in general.”

“Seriously, though… you’ve got an old man scowl on your face. What’s wrong?” Chris wonders, tilting his head just a little at Piers as he watches the younger man try and fail to shrug off Chris’ concern.

“You know what I’m thinking about, Captain.” Piers answers knowingly, and Chris finally looks somewhere other than at Piers. Piers tilts his chin up a little, pleased that the thoughts were mutual, pleased to know Chris was thinking about it just as he was. “So embarrassed you can’t even look at me now? Was I that bad?”

“I didn’t say that.” Chris answers honestly with a soft chuckle. “No, you were good. I don’t mind chapped lips the way other people do for some reason. It was over kinda quickly though.”

“I didn’t think you were into guys.” Piers explains simply, and Chris shrugs to himself dismissively.

“When have I had time to really determine if I’m gay or bisexual or whatever?” Chris observes, slumping back to lay across the chair with his feet up on the bed. “You know I don’t care what other people are so long as they’re getting the job done and are happy at home.”

“Right.” Piers mutters softly, recalling the first time they conversed over homosexuality, religion, and every debatable subject in between, taking the time to really get to know each other during the downtime on the job. “I guess I mean that I didn’t think that you were into me.”

“Surprise, surprise.” Chris answers sarcastically. “You really need to give yourself a little more credit. It’s not every day that people give their lives to save mine. It’s not every day that someone searches eastern Europe for six months looking for my sorry ass. You were instantly determined and you’re a good leader… that’s why I wanted to retire and give you a chance at a position like mine.”

“I’ve got leader skills, Chris. That doesn’t mean that I’m an actual leader.” Piers replies modestly, then reaches out and drags Chris’ chair closer to the bed. He looks up at Chris’ face, trying to figure out what else to say, what else to do to convey what he’s thinking. That he’s relieved and pleased that Chris didn’t retire from the BSAA; Piers decides to be frank about it. “I’m glad you didn’t retire, though… You’re what got me into the BSAA…”

Chris sits up in his chair, watching Piers, nostalgia flickering over his features. “It was the BSAA or the Special Forces… and I promised a better salary.”

“With hobbies like mine, you need a good salary.” Piers gives Chris a small smirk, leaning on the railing of the hospital towards him. Chris moves his chair closer and the small talk seems to be over, Chris leaning in as a hand reaches out to cup the back of Piers’ head and pull him into a kiss, slow and deep and sensual, unlike the last. The last kiss had been urgent, rushed, Piers trying to find a way to convey himself, while this is Chris’ turn and he takes his time with it, savors it and feels Piers do the same with a quiet and appreciative groan.

Chris breaks the kiss, fingers curling into the collar of Piers’ shirt to hold him in place, leaning in to kiss over Piers’ neck slowly. He can feel Piers’ fingers scratching at his hair and hears him murmur Chris’ name under his breath and Chris can feel his heartbeat speeding up at the sound of it. He leans in to give Piers another kiss when Piers shoves Chris back into his chair and hops off the bed, moving to straddle Chris’ lap and kiss him again hungrily, and Chris vaguely hears his conscience point out that you don’t spend downtime on BSAA missions making out with your second-in-command.

For once, Chris puts the boy scout mentality away as he wraps his arms around Piers’ waist to hold him where he is. Chris has Piers making more of those pleased, soft sighs between kisses, as though he’s getting drunk on what Chris is doing to him, when the phone buzzes on the nightstand. Huffing at the inconvenience, Chris reaches over and answers the call. “Yes?”

“Found who we’re looking for.” Jill answers on the other line, but Chris is having a hard time paying attention, leaning his head back as Piers kisses and bites over his neck. He moves his free hand down Piers’ back slowly until it rests over Piers’ posterior and Chris gropes his ass shamelessly, earning a surprised gasp from the one on his lap.

“Great, Jill. Find a place for us to meet and we’ll be right there with the data.” Chris answers, continuing what he’s doing with his free hand. Piers rolls his hips smoothly over Chris’ lap, teasing really, and Chris as to bite back a pleased grunt.

“Alright. I’ll let you know when I find the right place.” Jill answers, completely oblivious. She hangs up with a bye, not bothering to wait for Chris’ reply. Not that Chris has the chance to give one, because as soon as Piers overhears Jill hang up, he grabs the phone out of Chris’ hand and tosses it onto the bed before leaning forward and kissing Chris again hungrily, desperately. Chris leans back in the seat just a little with the sudden movement and their added weight is enough to send the chair toppling over with the pair of them.


	5. Natural Selection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Piers, Chris, and Jill get help from an unexpected source, memories are dragged out from under the floorboards, and Piers begins to face just what he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is a VERY short chapter. Forgive me. Now that the Thanksgiving rush is over, I should be able to write more. Thanks SO freakin' much for all the kudos and the comments. They keep me going.

Car headlights flash through the window of the office and Jill glances out guardedly. There’s someone else in the closed office with her, a 12-year-old young man looking nervous and uncertain. Another flash of headlights, the sound of an engine drawing near, and Jill rests a hand over her Beretta in its holster. The 12-year-old looks up to Jill, shifting in his seat.

“Relax.” Jill sighs to the kid, dropping her hold on her Beretta and opening the door as two figures walk up. Chris comes in first, dressed in his uniform, and Piers follows wearing a uniform also, Chris’ shirt on over a black wife beater and a MOLLE vest over the shirt. His boots thunk on the floor and he looks to be in good spirits, while Chris is calm and cool professionalism.

“Captain Redfield.” Jill greets. “This is Miguel Alverez, and he’s going to help us out.” Miguel looks from Jill to Chris, and then to Piers, still looking like he’s about to have an anxiety attack.

“Alright.” Chris answers, pulling the strap of the laptop bag off his shoulder and puts it on the desk in front of Miguel. “Let’s see what he can do.”

Miguel takes the laptop out of the bag and sets it up, Jill speaking to him in Spanish, explaining what is expected of him. Miguel nods and gets to work, typing away after he plugs in the flash drive. Jill looks over to Piers and Chris, speaking up. “What took you two so long?”

“We had to get Piers a pair of boots.” Chris answers readily, Piers pointing to his footwear on cue. He gives Jill a small smirk, pleased to be wearing them to complete his outfit, and straightens back up. Piers glances at Chris discreetly, and Chris gives him a brief lop-sided grin, not too brief to be missed by Jill. She narrows her eyes at the pair of them.

“You must be so pleased to have them finally.” She says cryptically, and Chris clears his throat, glancing at Piers briefly. Piers glances back at him, then turns back to the door to peer out the small window on it. They didn’t get very far at the abandoned asylum after Jill’s phone call. Chris hand managed to flip them over and pin Piers to the floor, biting out a rough, snaky remark against Piers’ neck when Jill had texted them to hurry up.

Piers looks out at the street before them, able to see into the dark alleys and finding only trashcans greeting him in the shadows. He can see farther as well and if he focuses, the cars seem to drive past slower. He doesn’t have a gun, though he’s got clips and basic supplies in the pouches strapped to his vest. No, he understands he’s not yet trusted with a weapon, and won’t ask for one. Instead, he happily keeps quiet and accepts his present role as pack mule. At least they’re trusting him with following along. At least he’s not being treated like the monster that he thinks he is.

He knows he deserves that treatment, saw the initial unnerved look in Chris’ eyes when Piers had come to and looked right at him with eyes that were no longer human in appearance. Piers wonders if Chris instantly thought of a pair of eyes similar to Piers’ that were red in hue and filled with unbridled hatred for Chris, once upon a time. He sighs softly, turning back to Chris and Jill as Jill lets out a triumphant “Yes!”

Chris walks over to Miguel’s other side, he and Jill leaning in to look at the computer screen. Jill says something to Miguel in Spanish quietly, pulling him to his feet gently and guiding him to the door. She speaks to him quietly as Chris moves to sit in the chair that Miguel had been sitting in. He clicks on one of the files now unlocked and begins reading. What he finds inside is research on the sniper leaning against the wall beside the door to the office.

_Subject File No. 100_   
_Subject has been under sedation since the last session in the pressurized chamber. Subject had attempted to escape again. We’ve had the subject here for only 24 hours and have only been able to get basic stress tests done with him. He is capable of lifting twice his body weight, fatigue taking some time to settle in during his efforts. His speed is increased, though not comparable to the speed of the only other successful mutation that we have on file, which is Albert Wesker. At present, subject is capable of running 100 meters in 5.29 seconds, breaking all records for a normal human._

Chris looks up from what he’s reading and over to Piers, just trying to imagine his second-in-command being forced to go through obstacles for strangers behind a two-way mirror running things on monitors, waiting to draw blood, take samples, and poke at the young man some more to see what else they can glean from their new guinea pig. He looks back to the files and clicks another. What greets Chris’ eyes is pictures and a map, listing locations of various organizations that the Family works with as well as a few facilities. “Piers. Come here.”

Obediently, Piers goes over to the desk and leans on it, hovering slightly over Chris as he looks to the screen. “Captain?”

“Any of these look or sound familiar? Did you pick up anything from anyone’s conversations while you were there?” Chris asks, deciding to not show Piers what data the Family has on him. He doesn’t want to upset Piers and he’s not sure how well Piers would take it.

“…that one.” Piers points to a name, then looks to Chris. “They said they were sending things to _this_ compound.”

“Alright.” Chris looks up to Piers’ face and gives him a small, confident grin. “We’re halfway home already.”

Piers can’t help but smile back, relieved to see that kind of smile on Chris’ face in what feels like years. He remembers seeing a smile like that when Chris first recruited him, as he made his way through training and proved he was worth his sweat and then some to the BSAA as one of their best snipers. Piers remembers his life before he saw that smile, waving off a father, then two older brothers, to war and fighting. They left him behind with their best tools and expected Piers to graduate high school and go to college, working in the family business as a part-time mechanic while he earned his degree.

\---

_The sound of rock music playing from the stereo in the back of the garage, the smell of motor oil. This is home for Piers Nivans, youngest of three, and he's halfway through college at 21 years old. He's busy working underneath a red 1965 Ford Mustang that had been found abandoned on the side of the road in poor shape a couple of months ago. The music stops suddenly and Piers curses under his breath. Knowing his luck, his iPod died again because he forgot to charge it the night before. He slides out from under the car and is surprised to see a man standing there, hands stuffed in jacket pockets, looking around the garage curiously._

_"Hey." Piers frowns at the stranger. "Customers aren't allowed back here. You need something?"_

_"Yeah." The guy answers, walking over to Piers and holding his hand out. "Captain Chris Redfield. BSAA."_

_"BSAA?" Piers replies quizzically, then takes Chris' hand and shakes. "The monster-hunters that were doing work in India like a year ago or something?"_

_"Or something." Chris chuckles, taking Piers' questioning criticism in stride._

_"What can I do for you, Captain Redfield?" Piers asks. "If you're interested in the car, it_ is _for sale."_

_"No. I'm here for you, Piers." Chris answers, and Piers takes a small step back, frowning at Chris. "I'm not looking for any trouble... I had your file put on my desk by an Army recruitment officer from an office nearby your campus."_

_Piers turns away, expression slipping easily from wary to bitter. He'd tried to enlist and his parents had both shot him down. His father had shouted, his mother had plead, and then his father made his way to the kitchen to open up the liquor cabinet. The evening had gone downhill from there and Piers had ended up talking to the recruitment officer and got his form cancelled before it'd gotten processed. "What about it?"_

_"He found out what kind of talent you've got. And he told me about it." Chris explains, looking at Piers curiously. "He says you're a hell of a shot."_

_"Yeah, that's what they tell me." Piers mutters, wiping the oil off his hands with a ratty old handkerchief. "But I'm not interested in enlisting anymore. I've got responsibilities here."_

_"On the salary the BSAA would have you on, you could afford to pay someone else to take care of those responsibilities here for you." Chris replies, folding his arms. "Give me the next excuse."_

_Piers looks up, surprised by how blunt Chris is and is greeted with a small, somewhat-cocky smirk. Piers narrows his eyes at Chris as he answers him, "How about you leave now and give me some time to think about it and I'll get back to you."_

_"If you insist..." Chris turns and heads for the door. "It was nice talking to you. I'll see you around."_

_"Doubt it." Piers mutters. If there's some kind of divine god of irony, they couldn't resist seizing the opportunity._

_A month later, Piers finds himself sitting in the police precinct, one wrist handcuffed to the arm of a chair, looking miserable and waiting for his parents to find out just what the hell happened to him. He's got a split lip and he looks a little rough around the edges, the look complimenting the confused expression on his face when he sees Captain Chris Redfield walk into the building as though he's a Police Chief rather than a BSAA Captain, and strides over to one of the officers and begins talking to him nonchalantly._

_Piers can't make out what they're saying from where he's stuck, but the fact that they both glance over right at him leaves Piers thinking that it has something to do with him. Slowly, Chris and the officer walk over to him. "I mean it, Captain. Criminal mischief, reckless endangerment, driving under the influen--"_

_"I am sober!" Piers snaps, glaring at the officer. "I went over it with you guys six goddamn times, I tested positive because you guys busted me_ right after _I took a goddamn drink! I got caught doing something illegal, that doesn't mean I'm an idiot...!"_

_Piers realizes just how that sounds and leans back in the chair, defeated. The officer turns back to Chris, muttering. "He's a 20-year-old mama's boy and he's got more problems than he does solutions. Why are you wasting your money?"_

_"If he's learning something from this, then it's not a waste." Chris replies wisely and the officer sighs in defeat, reaching down and uncuffing Piers from the chair. Piers gets to his feet, dusting himself off, and looks to Chris for an explanation. Chris doesn't give one, instead clapping Piers on the shoulder. "How about a coffee?"_

_"Yeah, sure." Piers answers, figuring enduring another recruitment attempt is the least he can do as thanks for Chris bailing him out. They leave the precinct with Chris' arm still draped about Piers' shoulders._

\---

Piers disappointed his parents' plan with the BSAA, and only now does it occur to him that his parents were undoubtedly told he was killed in action. He glances to Chris, murmuring, “Captain, was my family ever told what happened to me at the underwater oil field?”

“…you were listed as MIA in the BSAA’s records.” Chris answers, looking to Piers. “We didn’t have a body so I wasn’t going to put KIA anywhere on your records. Not if there was, uh…”

“Not if there was a chance hell froze over and I turned out to be alive and normal?” Piers finishes for Chris, turning away and scrubbing a hand over his face, because they’re having _this_ conversation again. This conversation where Piers argues that he’s not human and everything’s wrong with him and Chris tries to argue the contrary.

“Piers.” Chris’ voice is firm and he looks up at Piers, his expression conveying just how much he doesn’t want to have this discussion. Jill leads Miguel outside as if on cue, and Chris continues despite not wanting to. “According to their research and notes? You’re stable-- _too_ stable for their liking because it meant they couldn’t make you obey without the P30. We’ll run tests of our own when we get back to the BSAA to be sure, but right now? I need you here.”

And that makes Piers pause, because he hasn’t heard anyone say they needed him around in a long time, and the last person who said it and meant it was Chris. Weakly, Piers points out, “…you need me here as a pack mule?”

“Do I look like I keep an anti-material rifle in my back pocket?” Chris replies, looking up at Piers with a small grin. “Jill confiscated a couple of things from Miguel when she got him. They’re all yours for now.” Chris motions to the bag on the table by the door and Piers turns to it, pulling out a couple of handguns and clips; he frowns disapprovingly at them and promptly sits with them and takes them apart, getting to work on cleaning them and making sure they’re not going to jam on him at an inconvenient time.

“These haven’t been used. He must’ve just gotten them.” Piers observes.

“Payment for his work for the Cartel, I bet.” Chris replies, printing out a map to the compound. “We’ll figure something out for you when we get to Culiacán. That’s where this compound is.”

Chris frowns when his cell phone rings and picks it up. He hadn’t given the number out to anyone-- it was a prepaid phone he’d picked up to keep in touch with Jill. His BSAA-issue cell phone was the first thing he took apart and tucked away in neat, dismantled pieces in his bag. “Hello?”

“Captain Chris Redfield.” A woman says on the other line, and it’s a voice Chris has heard before but can’t really place.

“Who wants to know?”

“This is Agent Hunnigan.” She answers. “As I understand it, you’re on the run from the BSAA right now, as well as… an unnamed third party.”

Subtle, Chris decides, and clears his throat before he answers it. He remembers her wiring him through to Leon outside of Lanshiang. “If that’s how you want to put it, sure.”

“Well, that’s how I’m putting it. This third party is covering their tracks quickly, including their involvement in the attacks in China.” Hunnigan explains, sounding displeased. “It’s in everyone’s best interests that I help you get what you need in order to complete your personal mission there in Mexico.”

“Did Agent Kennedy tell you to do so…?” Chris wonders, sitting up slightly in his chair.

“He didn’t have to, and he’s preoccupied with your mutual adversary.” Hunnigan explains. “If he gets the opportunity, I’ll have him get into contact with you to explain his side of the story.”

“Alright. What can you do to help us, Agent Hunnigan?” Chris asks, glancing over at Piers who has since stopped cleaning his new handguns in favor of listening in to one side of Chris’ phone conversation.

“I can get you supplies and equipment in order to help you succeed. Tell me what you need and I’ll get it to a FOS safehouse that’s no longer in use. I’ll send you directions to the safehouse. From there, you can get to your target and complete your mission.” Hunnigan explains calmly, and she sounds pleased with the plan. “What can I get you?”

“We need transport and weaponry. Some tactical gear.” Chris sighs, muttering Piers’ sizes in clothing without batting an eye, as well as listing Piers’ preferred weaponry. He mentions ammo for himself and Jill. “…maybe some packaged food and herbs… and if you can think of anything else you can squeeze into that little care package, it’s appreciated.”

“Noted. I’m sending you the coordinates in order to get to the safehouse. Good luck, Captain Redfield.” And with a click, Hunnigan ends the call.

\---

“Are we sure we can trust this ‘Agent Hunnigan’?” Jill wonders, frowning at Chris as they make their way over to a tall fenceline around a dilapidated building.

“She risked her job and possibly her life by helping Agent Leon Kennedy fake his death in order to make it to China to go after Security Director Simmons, Hunnigan’s boss. The former leader of the Family.” Chris explains, looking up at Jill as Piers pushes up on her boot to hoist her up over the fence. “She’s as good of an ally to us as Kennedy is. Leon would vouch for her.”

Jill unlatches the gate and opens it for Piers and Chris, leading them inside. “Alright… if this turns out to be one of those times trusting strangers bites us in the ass, I’m blaming you.”

“Stop complaining.” Chris grumbles, narrowing his eyes at Piers when he sees his sniper is amused by his annoyance. The three of them slip into the dilapidated building, making sure the door shuts behind them. Jill puts on her earpiece with its built-in flashlight and turns the flashlight on, looking around warily, Chris and Piers both doing the same with their earpieces.

What greets the three of them once they turn their lights on is an interior nowhere near as dilapidated as the exterior of the safehouse, perfectly camouflaged with the shady neighborhood that surrounds it. There’s metal shelving along the walls, barren for the most part, and a collection of cardboard boxes at the other end of the room beside an industrial sliding door. Chris walks over to the boxes, grabbing the piece of paper taped to the top of one of them, and reads it.

“Invoice.” He explains to the other two, looking over the list of the supplies in the boxes, pleased with what he finds. At the bottom of a page is a brief note that says ‘ _Good luck, Captain Redfield. -H_ ’

“So what’ve we got?” Jill asks, walking over to stand beside Chris. Piers moves to the boxes and draws a small knife, cutting the tape and opening them up in search of his clothes. When he finds him, Piers can’t help a triumphant chuckle, pulling the clothing out.

“I’m going to see where the hell the bathroom is in this place.” Piers announces, then tries another door, disappearing down a hall. There’s a pleased “found it!” muffled by the wall between them as the door shuts. Chris begins looking through the rest of the boxes and organizing the contents according to what it is and how important that it is.

“So…” Jill trails off, looking at Chris expectantly. “What’s going on with _you two_?” Chris gives her that withering frown over his shoulder and her coy, innocent look makes it intensify.

“What do you mean? We talked some… still aren’t seeing eye to eye on everything though.” Chris explains, pulling out a couple of ammo cases, able to tell that they’re carrying ammo by their weight alone. “He keeps trying to tell me that he’s a monster, that he’s dangerous.”

“…he _is_ dangerous, Chris.” Jill answers, looking at Chris with a hint of disappointment in her eyes. “His blood could contain the next virus that the next mad scientist discovers. Even if he’s stable personally, he’s a liability to the _whole world_ if he falls into the wrong hands, like he already did. We’re just lucky that the Family didn’t have him in custody long enough to do any _real_ damage… hopefully.”

“We’ll know for certain when we get to this compound.” Chris answers, looking to her. “We’re going to have to do this quiet and rely on stealth to make our way in.”

“Got a plan already, do you?” Jill sighs heavily, pulling off her hat to brush her hair out of her face.

“That’s right.” Chris answers, walking over to the sliding door and pressing a button to open it. The door slides up to open and on the other side is their new set of wheels. “…I might’ve asked for more than what was _really_ necessary, though.”

Jill looks to the truck in the safehouse garage and whistles lowly. “You‘re going to get spoiled if you keep this up.”

“I thought I already was.” Chris muses with a mild tone, glancing at Jill. “Lose both of my best partners only to have them somehow come back to me… pretty lucky guy.” Jill gives him a soft smile, one she reserves only for the people who have known her the longest.

“Look, whatever happens with this whole mess… I hope you and Piers get to be happy.” She admits finally, turning towards him more. “He found you even when I couldn’t, Chris.”

“I know.” Chris sighs, remembering Piers hunting him down in Edonia and forcing Chris to return to the BSAA and face the conflict in China head-on. In hindsight, Chris wouldn’t have wanted it to happen any other way-- he’d _needed_ to get his ass kicked into gear, and he remembers the past when Piers was a new recruit in the BSAA and had been out in the field for only a week and was losing it…

\---

_“Come out, Nivans.” Chris’ voice is patient. “I’m not talking to you through a door.”_

_“I’m fine, Captain!” Piers answers too quickly and too shakily to be convincing. Chris reaches down for the handle and tries it, finding it unlocked. He twists the knob and pushes the door open to look inside. Piers still has his gear on, dirt smeared and blood-spattered, sprawled in the bathtub. His face is wet with both sweat and tears, and Chris slips into the bathroom and shuts the door behind him. He crouches beside the tub, facing the rookie that’s a wreck inside._

_“Talk to me, Piers.” Chris says gently, using Piers’ first name to make him more comfortable._

_“My big brother… was out here when I was a kid.” Piers croaks, not looking at Chris immediately. “When he got killed in action. He was a Marine.”_

_Chris doesn’t have an answer; it’s not his time to give one. Instead, he listens as Piers continues, pausing to scrub a hand over his face quickly._

_“He was my dad’s favorite… s’like you beat the bad guys and they just come up with something worse to work with.” Piers squints, upset. “Or… or they just get more numbers-- or turn into_ fucking monsters _!”_

 _Chris wait’s a moment before he actually answers Piers. “…that’s why quitting isn’t an option, Piers. That’s why we’re_ needed _here, and that’s why we don’t leave anyone behind while we’re at it. That includes_ you _.”_

_Finally, Piers looks up at Chris with bloodshot eyes, lips drawn into a pained frown, and he feels so foolish for freaking out over the gunfight they’d had at noon. Crowded town square and six Lickers had Piers shaking in a bathtub, despite being the cause of death of two of the Lickers. He nods weakly at Chris, murmuring to him. “…thank you, Captain.”_

\---

“Ah.” Piers says loudly, snapping Chris out of his trip down memory lane. Chris looks up to see Piers standing there in clothes that fit perfectly, vest on with his name on it, BSAA patches on his biceps, and tactical gloves on his hands. He gives Chris his broadest smirk and Chris gives him a small smile back.

“Better?” Chris asks, and Piers nods, walking over to him and Jill.

“Better.” Piers answers, looking to the truck. “Nice ride.”

“It’s our ride.” Chris replies, seeing the keys on the driver’s seat. “Lets get our gear together and head out.”

It takes the three of them only 5 minutes or so to get their gear either together on their person or loaded and stowed away in the truck. Once it’s done, Chris picks up the truck keys of the driver’s seat and tosses them to Piers, who catches them mid-air and looks at them as though he doesn’t know what they are.

“You do remember how to drive, right?” Chris asks, tone teasing despite the question itself being genuine. Piers looks up to Chris’ face for any indication that he’s seriously offering Piers the chance to drive. There’s no sign on his Captain’s face that Chris is being a wise as, and Piers gives him another grin and nods.

“Yes, sir. I do.” He answers, getting in on the driver’s side and starting the truck up, pleased to hear her roar and purr to him. Piers pulls the truck out of the garage, presses the button to shut the garage door behind them, and then takes off down the road.

Chris watches Piers drive like it was only yesterday he’d been cruising through Waiyip behind the wheel of a humvee, and cannot help the sense of relief. If things like driving are coming to Piers as easy as breathing, then maybe there’s hope for Piers to return to active duty instead of being treated like a human lab rat.

“Don’t look so happy.” Piers says, glancing briefly at Chris. “People’ll think you’re planning something.”

“I am.” Chris answers. “The Family wants you, right? How about we give them what they want?”

“And then some.” Piers adds, tightening his hold on the steering wheel. “They wanted to see what I was capable of? Well… we’re gonna find out.”


	6. Supremacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Secret organizations, bio-organic experimentation, romance, a grenade launcher, and the death of Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine. And that's just the first half of the chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's taken me so long to post the next chapter!!! I can promise all of you that it won't happen again. And yes. There is smut in this chapter. Consider it my apology.

The moon’s looming out over the compound. Men in tactical gear and full face masks patrol the fence-lines dutifully, watching when a truck pulls up to the front gates and a young man steps out. He’s wearing a simple olive button down, a crew-neck tee underneath, both tucked into cargo pants and the pants tucked into the boots. Nothing more. His hands are raised immediately once he straightens up enough for the men standing in the gate booth to see who it is. One of the guards picks up the radio and tries to speak into it as quietly as possible, but Piers is able to hear clearly enough despite the quietness.  
  
“We have visual on Subject Four. Subject Four just pulled up to the front gates. I repeat, Subject Four has just pulled up in a vehicle to the front gate.”  
  
Piers keeps his hands raised, making no moves to attack, and the guards come out of the booth cautiously, their guns raised. One of them steps forward ahead of the other, speaking to Piers. “Keep your hands up.”  
  
“Yessir.” Piers answers promptly, rolling his eyes as the guard closes the gap and begins to cautiously frisk Piers for any possible concealed weaponry. The guard finds none and pulls away, raising his gun to point at Piers once again.  
  
“What’s in the truck?” The guard asks, and Piers glances at the truck with a critical frown.  
  
“…two bodies. BSAA Special Operations Agent Jill Valentine. And BSAA Special Operations Agent Chris Redfield.” Piers answers levelly, turning to look at the guards. The guard who did the frisking motions to the other guard, who begins inspecting the truck. He opens the tailgate when he gets to the back of the truck and finds two body bags laid out inside. He unzips them both, and sure enough, there are the two BSAA agents that Piers identified in the bags, pale and unmoving.  
  
The guard reaches in and checks Valentine’s pulse, then Redfield’s. He finds no pulse for either of them.  
  
\---  
  
Each body bag is wheeled down a corridor on a gurney by two different Family agents, taking a turn into a room marked as the morgue. They put the gurneys next to each other so that the doctors, when they come in, can begin autopsies to determine what Subject Four did to them to end their lives. Feeling accomplished, the two agents leave the morgue and go back down the corridor from whence they came.  
  
\---  
  
Piers is in a plain white room in just a pair of plain white pants. The same kind of room the Family had been doing their stress tests in. He looks up at the two-way mirror above him, frowning and knowing that there are scientists and curious Family members on the other side wanting to know more about him. About their “Subject Four”.  
  
A single beep is his warning before a spinning blade launches out of a sliding panel in the wall. Smoothly, Piers spins around out of the way, then ducks back to dodge a second blade. He can handle the tests they’re running now. He’s awake, his vision’s clear, and he knows what he has to do next. A third blade launches out of another panel and Piers leaps into a flip, then turns and rushes the opposite wall, gaining momentum enough to climb the wall as another panel slides open to launch a blade. Piers reaches down the same time that the blade is launched and grabs, smoothly catching the blade and dropping to the floor.  
  
Piers turns and slams the blade into the wall and grits his teeth as he drags, watching the plastic lining the walls protecting the floor-to-ceiling lighting shatter. He reaches in, taking a deep breath as he finds a chord and yanks. Sparks fly and exposed electric currents shoot through Piers that would fry a normal human being in an instant. Piers is unfazed, and takes a deep breath as the power in the room begins to flicker, then disappears entirely.  
  
Piers can hear them murmuring to each other worriedly up there, and decides to give them more to fret over, feeling the charge creep up and down his spine before he raises his hand and opens fire, electricity shooting right at the two-way mirror and shattering it. Piers grunts in pain, losing his footing and collapsing onto his knees with the exertion of channeling the electricity out of the severed power lines he just cut. He looks to his scarred arm, which is still human in appearance, and cannot help the wave of relief that washes over him.  
  
So he could still shoot thunderbolts out of one arm if he had the right kind of charge behind it, but it hurt like hell, left him weakened for a bit, and was next to impossible to really aim once he actually unleashed the electricity. Useful trump card, not a useful weapon. Piers gets to his feet, knees still a little weak, and makes it to the door out of the white room, that slowly opened as an emergency precaution when the power went out.  
  
Piers grabs at the piping he finds inside the wall and starts climbing. While he may not know the full layout of the compound, industrial buildings follow the same infrastructural layout, and finding his way to the right hiding spot won’t be difficult. He pries open the grating of a duct and crawls in, moving as quietly as he can until he gets to another vent and peers down at the hallway before him. There’s guards patrolling and running around and the alarm gets sounded. Piers cusses under his breath and very carefully opens up the vent, putting it in the duct and waiting. A guard’s footfalls greet his ears and he waits, watching until a shadow comes into his line of vision, then he drops out from the duct, landing on the guard’s shoulders. Piers grabs the edge of the vent, tightens his legs around the guard’s neck and twists viciously, breaking the guard’s neck. The guard drops out from between Piers’ thighs and Piers lets go of the edge of the vent, dropping to his feet smoothly. He grabs the guard by the tactical vest the guard’s wearing and drags the body into the nearest room. He tugs off the guard’s mask and the multiple eyes underneath confirm that the Family’s foot soldiers are J’avo.  
  
\---  
  
 _“So explain something to me,” Chris begins, then takes a sip of his coffee. “What’s a kid like you doing drag-racing and getting himself into trouble instead of pursuing the career you wanted to pursue? You’ve got the right stuff for the military, you’re from a military family.”_  
  
 _“And I’m a ’mama’s boy’.” Piers scowls, drinking a soda instead of a coffee. “My mom didn’t want to lose me to a suicide bomber or something else terrible...”_  
  
 _“I can appreciate that.” Chris says, “But she’s gotta know that that kinda choice isn’t hers to make. If anything, she ought to support you for wanting to fight for your country… that’s how it was in my family.”_  
  
 _“What, when you signed up for the BSAA?” Piers says and his tone is dry when he says each letter of the organization that Captain Redfield works for._  
  
 _“No, actually… I started in the Air Force.” Chris explains, and Piers raises his eyebrows. “It’s true. I was a pilot. Served out my due time, came home and joined the Raccoon City Police Department.”_  
  
 _“Raccoon City…?” Piers asks, and it’s the same tone that Chris hears any time he mentions his hometown. Chris nods, looking away as he sips his coffee and there’s this distant look in his eyes, one that Piers’ has seen in his father’s eyes, in his brother’s eyes. It’s a haunted nostalgia with a subtle hinting of anger and fear, and it draws Piers in like a moth to a flame. “…touchy subject, huh?”_  
  
 _“I’ll share a few stories sometime.” Chris reassures, putting his cup down. “If you’re around BSAA Headquarters, that is.”_  
  
\---  
  
Piers double-checks the guard’s PDA from behind the tactical mask and then tucks the PDA away, taking another left and finds his way into the morgue. He steps in and shuts the door, walking over to the only security camera in the room as he tugs off a glove. He reaches up, sparks shooting out of his hand in a brief little burst and frying the camera. He then walks over to the two body bags on the gurneys and opens Jill’s body bag, then Chris’.  
  
He pulls a pair of syringes out of one of the pockets on his disguise and jabs Jill’s arm, injecting her with something. He then walks over to Chris and does the same. There’s no visible reaction and Piers leaves the two bodies on the gurney, locking the morgue door before he rummages around and finds the duffel bags that the Family had seized when they’d taken Piers in. He unzips it and pulls out the pieces of metal and quickly gets to work assembling.  
  
Jill lets out a groggy groan, coming out of her deep catatonic sleep. She slowly sits up as Chris begins to breathe a little less deeply, stirring also. She looks over as Piers pulls off his tactical mask and helmet, anti-material rifle half-assembled across his lap where he sits on the floor. He looks up to her and pulls a bottle of water out of the bag, tossing it to her. Jill fumbles catching it, then unscrews the cap and chugs the entire bottle.  
  
Chris sits up, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Guess the plan worked.” Piers aims and Chris’ water bottle hits him right upside the head. The captain isn’t fazed by the blow, plucking the bottle off his lap, opening it and guzzling down its contents. It takes another couple of minutes or so for them to really get their blood circulating and really wake up, but soon Jill and Chris are both on their feet, grabbing their gear out of the duffle bag and strapping in.  
  
“Alright.” Piers gets to his feet, rifle fully assembled and strapped across his back, and pulls out the Family PDA out of one of the pockets on his disguise and flips it open, looking over the layout of the building saved on the PDA. Piers points at a corridor to the left of the one the Morgue is on. “We need to go this way.”  
  
“Good. We get the data, we get out. No exploring.” Chris says firmly, eyes on Piers.  
  
“I know that.” Piers answers defensively and scowls at Chris. “You really think I’d be that reckless?”  
  
“No, we just can’t afford you to get captured again-- did they do anything?”  
  
“Basic-- they didn’t get the chance to take blood, I made sure of it. _Alright?_ ”  
  
“Ladies.” Jill speaks up, looking between them. “The lovers’ spat can wait til after we get the job done, right?”  
  
“It wasn’t--” Chris says quickly at the same time that Piers scoffs with a “We weren’t--” and the pair look at each other before nodding to Jill’s question in defeat.  
  
“That’s what I thought.” Jill answers, trying to keep from looking too amused, and turns and heads for the door. Piers and Chris come up to the other side of the door before Piers slips outside, looking around. Coast clear, Piers motions for Jill and Chris to leave the morgue and follow him, which they comply and do.  
  
The three of them follow the map that was on the PDA, taking turns along corridors with Piers in front in his disguise to warn them of any trouble. They all know its only a matter of time before the security cameras help the Family determine where they are, that Piers isn’t really a member of their ranks, but the J’avo that they encounter are a little slower on the uptake than your average lackey, and it makes it all the more easier for the three BSAA agents to maintain their element of surprise until they get to the records room.  
  
Jill makes quick work of picking the lock while Chris and Piers keep their guard up, looking along either side of the corridor with their weapons raised. Once in, they lock the door once again behind them, Chris hurrying over to one of the computers in the room. He plugs in the flash drive they’d gotten the encrypted files decoded on, using the data their hacker friend left with them to decode everything he pulls up once the file loads onto the screen. Piers hurries over to another computer, searching through the files on the desktop until he pulls up the security camera program. He smirks, picking cameras in empty corridors and setting them to loop a minute’s worth of feed.  
  
Jill pulls up to a third computer and does much the same that Chris is, looking for any valuable files. What she finds makes her reach into one of her pouches on her cargo pants and pull out another flash drive, quickly downloading the files she’s discovered. She looks over to Chris and Piers and decides to elaborate on her discovery. “Found the financial records-- if we catch these guys by their wallets, they’ll be done for.”  
  
“I hope so.” Piers answers grimly, looking over the security cameras and continuing to loop the feeds when the corridors are finally empty. He makes his way over to Chris’ computer when he’s done, leaning over Chris shoulder where he sits so that he can inspect his captain’s screen to satisfy his curiosity. “What’ve you found?”  
  
“Plenty.” Chris answers, cryptically, his tone that rough and dark one that he gets when he’s focused on something of an unsavory nature. He closes out the program on the screen a moment later and unplugs the flash drive. “We need to get moving, they’ve probably figured out where we are and what we’ve hacked into by now.”  
  
Piers takes a few steps back to give Chris the room to stand and gather his things so that they can move on to the next part of their plan.  
  
Chris turns to Piers once he’s done and snags the Guard’s PDA out of Piers’ pocket, highlighting one of the rooms on the map. “They’ve got samples of your blood in a lab not too far from here in the compound. We’ll grab the samples, then we’ll get out of here.”  
  
“Alright, Captain.” Is Piers’ loyal answer, and the three of them slip out of the computer room and hurry down the corridor in the direction that Chris has directed them to go in. Piers speaks up again, already working on their escape plan. “They’re keeping the truck in with their weaponry in the warehouse.”  
  
“Perfect.” Chris answers, looking to Piers with a small smirk. “Got any ideas?”  
  
Piers catches the look, nearly tripping on his boots as they hurry through the place and skid into the lab. “Uh… I’ve got a couple, yeah.”  
  
“One to get us out of here?” Chris questions, looking at Piers expectantly. Piers nods slowly, then looks around the lab for his blood samples. Jill shuts the door to the lab behind them and drops down the barricade bar to delay any possible interruptions.  
Chris and Piers check all the labels on the vials as they go along until Chris stops in front of one marked PN-001, then one marked PN-002 until Chris looks over the entire tray of vials and sees that they are all Piers’ blood. He grabs the tray and puts the lid on top to make sure the vials don’t move or get shaken or broken in the tray, then slides it into a large compartment on his belt.  
  
Piers looks up at Chris once he sees his captain grab a lot of blood samples and shove them into a pouch on his uniform. That was all his blood? Chris catches Piers’ eyes and gives him a small, reassuring smile, murmuring. “Lets go.”  
  
“No.” Piers answers roughly, tugging a pouch off his vest and opening it. “Not yet.” He tugs out a bunch of remote bombs, planting them evenly amongst the tables and shelves in the room before he takes out the detonator. “Now we can go.”  
  
Quickly, all three BSAA agents leave the room and don’t look back. Piers looks down at the detonator, unable to help the surge of relief he feels when he presses the button after they turn the corner.  
  
\---  
  
Units are being instructed to head to the warehouse over the radio, every available security guard scrambling to comply. They line up around the warehouse, guns raised, ready to fire. One of them moves forward to press the button to open the main doors when a muffled “fire in the hole!” sounds out. A couple of the guards look at each other quizzically when an explosion blasts the door open and sends them flying.  
  
The truck tears out of the gaping hole in the warehouse, Piers kneeling on the roof with a M32 MGL in his hands. He spins around, staying on the roof thanks to a cable clipped to his belt loop on one end, and the other end clipped to the racks along the sides of the roof, and fires another grenade out at crowd as they begin to open fire on the truck as it speeds up for the front gate. They miss their target for the most part, though Piers feels the graze of a bullet tearing the material of the shoulder of his uniform and he curses under his breath, firing off another round.  
  
The second round doesn’t do as much damage as the round before it, but it slows down the guards trying to climb into their black jeeps to go after their escapees. Piers whips around at the last minute, aiming the MGL at the front gate and fires a third round, blasting through the gate to get the truck in the clear to speed off down the road away from the compound.  
  
  
“So that’s all my blood.” Piers observes as he slings himself into the back seat from the roof in one smooth motion. “Right, Captain?”  
  
“Yes, it is… you didn’t know just how much blood they took, did you?” Chris replies, glancing at Piers from the front passenger seat. Piers shakes his head, looking sad and thoughtful and withdrawn all at the same time. That contemplative look that he so rarely gets when something serious and profound has happened to him, and he needs to take the time to think it over and let it sink in a little more.  
  
Chris wants to reach back to Piers, or say something reassuring. Hell, he’d even climb into the back seat and give his protégé a hug if he thought that it would do any kind of good… but he doesn’t. He just gazes at Piers with searching brown eyes, then reluctantly turns to face forward again.  
  
\---  
  
 _It was brisk, but not terribly cold, and Piers was sick and tired of that heartbroken look on his mother’s face. She had said goodbye fifty million times. Had straightened out the collar of his uniform jacket, had told him what to do and what not to do with his dirty laundry… Piers backed away from her, looking over her sad face then to his father’s stern one. Of course. There’s no weakness from a father who’s sending his son off like this… it’s not father to son right now for Piers. It’s soldier to soldier… course, that’s the way his father has treated him often._  
  
 _He turns away and heads over to the humvee and gets in the back seat, expression withdrawn and not a word from him. The doors shut, the vehicle starts, and it pulls out of the lot, two other humvees full of new BSAA recruits along with it. This one, however, has Captain Chris Redfield sitting beside Piers, and he glances at the captain and something in his chest settles, tells him he’s doing the right thing and that signing up with the BSAA wasn’t something to be ashamed of. Not by a long shot._  
  
\---  
  
Piers gets out of the car and slams the door shut, heading further into the FOS safe house. For all their excitement and tenacity when they left the place, Piers feels the polar opposite. Demoralized and defeated in some odd way, just looking at the vials as Chris had shoved them into his pouch, seeing all the files with his initials on them, and knowing deep down he’d become the very thing he’d spent so much time fighting against. He is now a Bio-Organtic Weapon, and no amount of Chris’ reassuring smiles or gruff pep talks are going to change that.  
  
He makes his way out of the garage and into the rest of the safe house, looking around before he decides to go upstairs to the quarters the safe house holds for agents to get some rest in between jobs or while waiting on a mission’s progress of fall through. His foot makes it onto the first step when Chris steps into the safe house and speaks up. “Piers, we need to talk.”  
  
“There’s nothing to talk about, Captain.” Piers answers, turning to face him. “I’m assuming that you and Agent Valentine would prefer looking over my files and data yourself rather than having me take a look at them, so I’ll leave you both to it.”  
  
And with that, Piers turns and heads up the stairs. Chris sighs heavily, not really sure what to say to convince Piers to stay, and he turns to look at Jill for a little insight. All she does is look at Chris impatiently before speaking. “Well don’t just stand there. Go up there and talk to him. He’s probably feeling like he’s completely alone, or that he’s betrayed something major by being what he is.”  
  
“…speaking from experience?” Chris asks gently and Jill rolls one of her shoulders in response before turning and heading into the back room to set up one of the laptops and get to reading all the files they’ve acquired. Chris scrubs a hand over his face, then turns and climbs his way up the stairs. Once at the top, he goes for the first doorway and peers into the room. Sure enough, sprawled across one of the beds with all of his gear still on, rifle on safety and leaning against the wall beside his head, is Piers.  
  
Chris slips into the room silently and nudges the door shut behind him. The click of the latch alerts Piers and he opens his eyes to look over his shoulder at Chris, uncanny green meeting calm brown. He sits up, unbuckling his vest and shrugging it off as his eyes remain fixed on Chris’ face. “…what do you want?”  
  
“You’re pretty obvious when something’s bothering you, Piers.” Chris answers readily, walking over to sit beside him on the bed.  
  
“Yeah? I don’t want to talk about it, Captain. Thanks.” Piers looks away, dropping his vest on the floor unceremoniously. “I don’t want to talk about any of this because no matter what I say, you’re going to fight for me to get back into the BSAA. After I told you I wanted you to stay on as Captain… you’re going to jeopardize your entire career for me.”  
  
“I’m not jeopardizing anything. If we can _prove_ with all the data that the Family had on you that you’re sound, then there’s no reason you can’t return to active duty.” Chris explains. “There’s no reason you can’t follow in my footsteps, take over my place for me.”  
  
“That’s what you recruited me for. From the very beginning it was all about you grooming me to take your place.” Piers says, voice becoming rough with emotion. “You never wanted a _partner_ with me.”  
  
“Sometimes you have to lose something in order to realize that it what you wanted all along.” Chris replies quietly and Piers gets to his feet, snapping.  
  
“That’s _bullshit_!” He kicks over a plastic empty trash bin across from the bed and next to the desk that’s tucked into the corner. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better, aren’t you?!” A pause and a frustrated sigh and he sits back down beside Chris again. “…I don’t even know anymore. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to think… I don’t even know what to _want_ anymore.”  
  
“You don’t?” Chris asks searchingly, wanting Piers to really reflect on what he’s saying. Piers looks up at Chris, chest feeling tight, and suddenly he feels like the world’s biggest asshole. He nudges a little closer to Chris.  
  
He mutters defeatedly, eyes cast downwards at the distance between his knee and Chris’ knee. “…I’m sorry, Captain.” Another beat, pause, thoughtful moment. “I keep thinking back to the oil field. How I made my peace with what I’d done. How I was okay with your face being the last thing I ever saw.”  
  
“Piers…”  
  
“And then I wake up, I get taken, I’m… everything I stood against in the BSAA.” Piers hangs his head, forlorn, and Chris catches his shoulder.  
  
“Oh, cut the ‘pity me’ bullshit.” Chris has had enough. He looks Piers over. “The BSAA is about fighting Bio-Terriorism. You’re not a _Carla_ or a _Wesker_. You may be mutated, you may not be the same as you used to be, but I don’t see you out there killing people and getting your rocks off on the destruction of entire cities and civilizations.”  
  
Piers looks up at Chris with an expression that Chris can’t really place, so he continues. “You’re not everything you stood up against. You sacrificed everything doing what you thought was right. There’s not a _damn_ thing wrong with th--” Piers grabs him by his vest and yanks him in, kissing him deeply and hungrily. It takes about a single second for Chris to respond, and by then Piers is pushing Chris to lay back on the bed and is climbing on top of him.  
  
Chris’ firm arms wrap around Piers, holding the younger man to him as they kiss roughly, desperately. From there, it’s a mess; Piers reaches up and unfastens Chris’ vest impatiently, biting at Chris’ bottom lip with a low growl. The older man groans huskily at the bite, hands finding their way down to Piers’ belt and he unbuckles it quickly, unfastening his pants afterwards. Once he does, Chris then untucks Piers’ shirt, tugging a glove off his hand and then the other. Bare hands slide under Piers’ shirt, touching over his skin, re-familiarizing themselves with every inch they can reach.  
  
Piers moves to straddle Chris’ lap properly when he sits up to shrug his vest off the rest of the way, quickly followed by the tight undershirt beneath it. Shirtless, with Piers on his lap, Chris pulls Piers into another hungry kiss, hands moving to unfasten his own pants when he feels Piers’ hands on his belt already. Chris moves his hands up to unbutton Piers’ shirt as he turns his face away from the kiss in favor of kissing and biting over Piers’ neck. The younger man moans lowly, quietly, and rocks his hips against Chris’ already half-hard.  
  
Chris rocks his hips back up against Piers’, enjoying the feel of the friction for a time before it’s too much and not enough all at once. He slides a hand into Piers’ boxer briefs and takes his cock in hand, squeezing at him and reveling in the way Piers’ mouth goes slack. Piers pushes into his hand, hips rocking upwards in a dirty, smooth way that grabs Chris’ attention while Piers snakes a hand unto Chris’ briefs and mirrors Chris’ actions. He takes Chris’ length in hand, moving as fast as Chris is, and murmurs his name softly.  
  
Hitched gasps, soft grunts, low groans; Chris moves his hand a little faster and Piers does the same. Piers rubs a thumb in a circle over the head, Chris mimics him. Piers pushes at Chris’ shoulder with his free hand and Chris takes the hint, laying back. Piers leans over him, resting his forehead against Chris’, and moves his hand a little faster over Chris’ length. Chris groans Piers’ name huskily, free hand reaching up to cup the back of Piers’ neck as they continue their ministrations.  
  
“You ever, uh…” Piers trails off, leaning back just enough to look down at Chris’ face, taking in the flush along his cheeks, the way his eyes were dark with lust. “…done this with a guy before?”  
  
“S’a loaded question.” Chris rumbles, looking up at Piers as his fingers scratch gently at Piers’ hair. Piers closes his eyes as Chris gives him his answer. “Couple times… nothing serious.”  
  
He says ‘nothing serious’ and yet Piers just somehow knows that what Chris means is ‘nothing like this’. Chris looks Piers’ face over searchingly, able to see the flush on his neck, then looks to his kiss-swollen lips before he kisses him again deeply. Piers fists his free hand in the pillow under Chris’ head, which doesn’t have a cover. The bed doesn’t have any sheets. Neither seem to mind.  
  
Piers is unable to hold back another moan as Chris moves his hand faster, both of them pushing into each other’s hands, the mattress’ springs creaking just a little under the exertion. Chris curses under his breath, Piers grasps at Chris’ shoulder with his free hand instead of the pillow, enjoying just how easy it is for him to hold Chris down. His fingers dig into Chris’ skin as his breath hitches and he comes hard, shooting over Chris’ stomach. He shudders as Chris slows his hand but doesn’t stop completely, waiting until Piers is completely spent to do so.  
  
“Fuck…” Chris slumps back against the mattress, letting out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding and closes his eyes with a low groan as Piers doubles his efforts. But then there’s the feeling of Piers shifting on Chris’ legs and he lifts his head up to look at Piers in time to see the head of his cock disappear into Piers’ mouth and it’s more than he can take. His head drops back and he pushes up into that warm heat before he can help himself. Piers isn’t fazed, using one hand to hold Chris’ hips down, while his other hand continues to move over Chris’ length, focused on sucking on just the head of his cock. He only does it for a couple of minutes before Chris is spilling into his mouth.  
  
Chris is panting softly as Piers pulls off, unable to help a shiver as Piers licks over sensitive skin. He reaches down and grabs Piers by the collar of his shirt and tugs him up so that they’re chest to chest again. He kisses Piers hungrily, surprised by the taste lingering on Piers’ tongue, and groans again as he savors the satisfied and _relieved_ feeling as he holds the younger man to himself.  
  
\---  
  
“There we go.” Jill points to the three flash drives on the desk. “The files we need to clear our names. And two back ups because we have the worst luck known to mankind.”  
  
“Right.” Piers acknowledges, eating his way through a third MRE meal. Piers had had a large appetite before his mutation but now it seems gargantuan. He tosses his leftover wrappers into the trash can before turning to Chris and Jill. “What about my data and samples?”  
  
“Split into three pouches. Again, because we have the worst luck known to mankind.” Chris answers, double checking all of his gear before he grabs one of the three pouches on the desk and straps it onto his vest with the other compartments. “Alright… so here’s the plan: make it back to the United States in one piece.”  
  
“Knowing that the Family, which has roots in the US more than anywhere else, is looking for us.” Jill adds, looking between the two of them. She wasn’t clueless. She’d seen the satisfied looks on their faces, the calm understanding they’d somehow come to. “So _that’s_ going to be fun.”  
  
“We’ll make it.” Piers says, tone firm, once again instilled with the unwavering faith he used to have in his abilities, in Chris’ abilities. He glances over at his Captain, who looks away from Piers only because his phone starts to ring.  
  
“Hello?” Chris asks when he answers it, frowning slightly. The frown relaxes when the person on the other line speaks, and Chris recognizes who it is.  
  
“Chris.” Leon says and he sounds a little worn out. “It’s Leon.”  
  
“I gathered. What the hell is going on? Your friend Hunnigan hooked us up with supplies… she said you’d call.” Chris observes, looking to his fellow agents as Piers and Jill both triple-check that all their gear is in order.  
  
“It’s complicated.” Leon answers, a light roar in the background on his side of the call. “Long story short, the Family’s after everyone who as involved in or a witness to the incident in China. You and your partner, me…”  
  
“Jake and Sherry?” Chris says suddenly, realizing that the other two survivors he personally knew from the China outbreak may very well be in danger.  
  
“Sherry got some help from a TerraSave member we know to get out of the country before the Family could get to her. As far as I know, she’s meeting up with Jake. I don’t know where and I told her it was best that I didn’t know.” Leon explains and Chris leans back against the counter, letting out a sigh of relief. A part of him had been worried about Claire in all of this, to know she was out of the country and with Sherry did end up giving Chris some peace of mind. Eventually… Claire would call him. She always did.  
  
“Alright… we’re going back to the BSAA. We’re going to find the Family’s rat and take them out of the equation. Once the BSAA is secure, you can bet your ass we’re going to do what we can to help get to the bottom of this.” Chris says with a firm voice, turning and heading out to the garage with the other two BSAA agents.  
  
“Good… I’ll keep in touch.” Leon says, then there’s a loud boom in the background.  
  
“Leon…?!” Chris walks around to the driver’s side and gets in, feeling anxious.  
  
“I’m alright.” Leon answers quickly. “This is only going to buy me a little time… but if anyone asks, I died in a traffic collision today.”  
  
“Alright. Noted.” Chris says. “I’ll keep my phone on.”  
  
“Roger.” Leon says, and Chris can hear the smirk his voice, followed by the click of Leon ending the call.  
  



End file.
